“We cannot know the future, nor can we change it,...It is best to be realistic about such things. But we have the time we have been given. So let us treasure it while we can.”

“Here we are, alive, and you and I will have to make it what we can.”

“My Tom died as babies do, gently and without complaint. Because they have been such a little time with us, they seem to hold to life but weakly. I used to wonder if it was so because the memory of Heaven still lived within them, so that in leaving here they do not fear death as we do, who no longer know with certainty where it is our spirits go. This, I thought, must be the kindness that God does for them and for us, since He gives so many infants such a little while to bide with us.”

“I don't see her anymore. We don't even go through the motions. Ozren had been right about one thing: some stories just don't have happy endings.”

“It is natural to want to forget, Anna, when everyday is a brimful of sadness. But those souls also forgot those that they had loved. You do not want that, surely? I have heard some preach that God wants us to forget the dead, but I cannot believe so. I think He gives us precious recollections so that we may not be parted entirely from those He has given us to love. You must cherish your memories of your babes, Anna, until you see them again in Heaven.”

“Who are we, really? Are our souls shaped, our fates written in full by God, before we draw our first breath? Do we make ourselves, by the choices we our selves make? Or are we clay merely, that is molded and pushed into the shape that our betters propose for us?”

“We were too intelligent, too cynical for war. Of course, you don't have to be stupid and primitive to die a stupid, primitive death.”