“The General Major walks up and has the bright idea to take my foot out of the river. And then, as if to remind me that there are certain people in life you cannot take for granted, even for moment, he says: “Well, I’d say you’re gonna live, but we all know that isn’t true.”

“Perrin, my father says a general can take care of the living or weep for the dead, but he cannot do both.”

“If you're gonna live, then live it up. If you're gonna give, then give it up. If you're gonna walk the Earth, then walk it proud. If you're gonna say the word, you got to say it loud.”

“You know,” he says, voice still low.“I have had nothing but trouble since you walked into my life.” “I’d walk straight back out of it if only you’d let me.”

“Well, as to that, all I'll say is, you can't take out a fellow's heart before he's ready to give it up.”

“A man walks into a bar and says: Take my wife–please. So you do. You take her out into the rain and you fall in love with her and she leaves you and you’re desolate.You’re on your back in your undershirt, a broken man on an ugly bedspread, staring at the water stains on the ceiling. And you can hear the man in the apartment above you taking off his shoes.You hear the first boot hit the floor and you’re looking up, you’re waiting because you thought it would follow, you thought there would be some logic, perhaps, something to pull it all together but here we are in the weeds again, here we arein the bowels of the thing: your world doesn’t make sense. And then the second boot falls. And then a third, a fourth, a fifth. A man walks into a bar and says: Take my wife–please. But you take him instead.You take him home, and you make him a cheese sandwich, and you try to get his shoes off, but he kicks you and he keeps kicking you. You swallow a bottle of sleeping pills but they don’t work. Boots continue to fall to the floor in the apartment above you.You go to work the next day pretending nothing happened. Your co-workers ask if everything’s okay and you tell them you’re just tired. And you’re trying to smile. And they’re trying to smile.A man walks into a bar, you this time, and says: Make it a double. A man walks into a bar, you this time, and says: Walk a mile in my shoes.A man walks into a convenience store, still you, saying: I only wanted something simple, something generic… But the clerk tells you to buy something or get out.A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river but then he’s still leftwith the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away but then he’s still left with his hands.”