“there is no collective guilt,...guilt is individual, like salvation." [p.28]”

“...a woman of quite bovine stupidity and potato-like contours...”

“Yessir. A crutch, like one-legged men always have.”

“It is cold at six-forty in the morning on a March day in Paris, and seems even colder when a man is about to be executed by firing squad.”

“… Shannon’s fingers itched to smash the man in the face. Inside his head he kept telling himself, Keep cool, baby, absolutely cool.”

“Words. I had always loved them. I collected them, like I had collected pretty stones as a child. I liked to roll words over my tongue like a lump of molten honeycomb, savouring the sweetness, the crackle, the crunch.”

“War is an unpredictable beast. Once unleashed, it runs like a rabid dog, ravening friend or foe alike. It can drag on for years, a slow attrition of nerve and fortitude, or be over in one brilliant flash, an extravagant conflagration of flame and blood and waste.”