“They lied, you know,” said Cpl. Allan Richmond. He hugged thewall next to Owens. Beside him, PFC Bucky Hatton crouched low, aBrowning 1911 semiautomatic gripped tightly in his hand.“Who?” asked Bart, glad to be out of the wind and rain, even if itwas only for a short time.“The assholes who said France was beautiful.”

“Some years ago I was at a committee meeting where one of the group suddenly launched upon one of the other members an astounding onslaught of abuse, vilification, and loathing from which only failing breath and imminent seizure caused him to desist. It was in fact my first experience of academic debate. The chairman, visibly shaken by the vehemence of this tirade, offered the right of reply to the person attacked, who then spoke as follows: "Mr Chairman, I did not say what I said with the specific and deliberate intention of reducing my colleague to spluttering apoplexy; that this has in fact happened I can only regard as a bonus."From that meeting I took away an important recognition — the lurking Bonus Factor In Otherwise Unpromising Situations.”

“Regret is the final breath of the weak.”

“Emma hung up and hugged her pillow tight to her chest. He shouldn't be making her feel this special and desired. He was just a friend. Right, just a friend. She wasn't even fooling herself anymore.”

“Life was a pleasure; he looked back at its moments, many of them as much shrouded in mist as the opposite bank of the Thames; objectively, many of them held only misery, fear, confusion; but afterwards, and even at the time, he had known an exhilaration stronger than the misery, fear, or confusion. A fragment of belief came to him from another epoch: 'Cogito ergo sum'. For him that had not been true; his truth had been, 'Senito ergo sum'. I feel so I exist. He enjoyed this fearful, miserable, confused life, and not only because it made more sense than non-life.”

“it is not only he who speaks contrary to what he knows who lies, but even more he who speaks contrary to what he does not know”

“One time I was standing on a corner in Chicago & a man stopped his car & asked for directions to a place I knew & I said that's too easy, ask me something harder & he yelled & said he wasn't playing games kid & then he drove off & I think about him sometimes & wonder if he ever got there.”