“She waited for you in a thousand different ways.”

“That was the one thing she knew now. Some chances came and went, and if you missed them, you could spend the rest of your life standing alone, waiting for an opportunity that had already passed you by.”

“By the time this damn war's over, we'll have hundreds of thousands of severely traumatized soldiers trying to put the pieces of their lives back together.”

“Before this trip and all that she'd learned about the three of them, she would have gotten angry or changed the subject. Anything to obscure the pain she felt. Now she knew better. You carried your pain with you in life. There was no outrunning it.”

“She remembered how it had felt and tasted, that slowly descending depression, like a thick glass jar that closed around you, sucking away the air you needed to breathe, creating a barrier between you and the world. The hell of it was that she'd been able to see all that she was missing, but when she'd reached out, all she'd touched was cold, hard glass.”

“Marriages go through hard times. Sometimes you have to get in there and fight for your love. That's the only way for it to get better.”

“Maybe time didn't heal wounds exactly, but it gave you a kind of armor, or a new perspective. A way to remember with a smile instead of a sob.”