“My gosh," I said, "another human being.""You'll never know how human," she said."Maybe I will," I said. "I could try."I did try, and I do try, and I give you the toast of a happy man: May the warm springs of the girl pool never run dry.--"Girl Pool”

“My life is nothing but room for you,’ I said. ‘It could never be filled by anyone but you.”

“Vera had not sensed my approach. She was peering into the instrument and turning knobs with child-like seriousness and ineptitude. It was obvious that she had never used a microscope before. I stole closer to her, and then I said, "Boo!"She jerked her head away from the eyepiece."Hello," I said."You scared me to death," she said."Sorry," I said, and I laughed.These ancient games go on and on. It's nice they do.”

“Eliza—” I said, “so many of the books I’ve read to you said love was the most important thing of all. Maybe I should tell you that I love you now.” “Go ahead,” she said. “I love you, Eliza,” I said. She thought about it. “No,” she said at last, “I don’t like it.” “Why not?” I said. ”It’s as though you were pointing a gun at my head,” she said. “It’s just a way of getting somebody to say something they probably don’t mean. What else can I say, or anybody say, but, ‘I love you, too’?”

“You were just babies then!", she said."What?" I said."You were just babies in the war - like the ones upstairs!"I nodded that this was true. We had been foolish virgins in the war, right at the end of childhood."But you're not going to write it that way, are you." This wasn't a question. It was an accusation."I-I don't know", I said."Well, I know," she said. "You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs."So then I understood. It was war that made her so angry. She didn't want her babies or anybody else's babies killed in wars. And she thought wars were partly encouraged by books and movies.So I held up my right hand and I made her a promise: "Mary," I said, "I don't think this book of mine will ever be finished. I must have written five thousand pages by now, and thrown them all away. If I ever do finish it, though, I give you my word of honor: there won't be a part for Frank Sinatra or John Wayne."I tell you what," I said, "I'll call it 'The Children's Crusade.'"She was my friend after that.”

“We'd been apart so long--I'd been dead so long," she said in English. "I thought surely you'd built a new life, with no room in it for me. I'd hoped that.""My life is nothing but room for you." I said. "It could never be filled by anyone but you.”

“I have since tried out this human-beings-as-nothing-but-radio-receivers theory on Paul Slazinger, and he toyed with it some. "So Green River Cemetery is full of busted radios," he mused, "and the transmitters they were tuned to still go on and on.""That's the theory," I said.He said that all he'd been able to receive in his own head for the past twenty years was static and what sounded like weather reports in some foreign language he'd never heard before.”