“We recognized who we were at a glace--all irregulars from the drifting nation of dreamy youth. We're ghosts of those times now, just nicked, straight-edged razors heaped in pawnshop drawers. Don't get old. Don't die. Kill despair. Keep hope.”

“We're no longer young men. We've lost any desire to conquer the world. We are refugees. We are fleeing from ourselves. From our lives. We were eighteen years old, and we had just begun to love the world and to love being in it; but we had to shoot at it. The first shell to land went straight for our hearts. We've been cut off from real action, from getting on, from progress. We don't believe in those things any more; we believe in the war.”

“I don't want you to be afraid of dying. All those people have survived cancer. You just watched hundreds of reasons to have hope drift off into the sky.”

“Each time we don't say what we wanna say, we're dying.”

“It's like a razor blade edging its way through my organs, shredding me, all I can think is: It will kill me, it will kill me, it will kill me. And I don't care.”

“As for those who think they don't like to read, well, I know they're making a mistake, just as all of us do when we try to judge ourselves. Now is the time to give reading a chance, for if you don't get the habit when you're young you may never get it. And if you don't get it, you may grow up to be just as dull as most adults are.”