“Courage is confused with picking up arms and cowardness is confused with laying them down.”

“Young men go to war. Sometimes because they have to, sometimes because they want to. Always, they feel they are supposed to. This comes from the sad, layered stories of life, which over the centuries have seen courage confused with picking up arms, and cowardice confused with laying them down.”

“One afternoon, I am complaining about the confusion of my age, what is expected of me versus what I want for myself.”

“There is a big confusion in this country over what we want verses what we need...you need food. You want a chocolate sundae.”

“I meant no disrespect. It's just that I had always felt that rabbis, priests, pastors, any cleric, really, lived on a plane between mortal ground and heavenly sky. God up there. Us down here. Them in between.”

“Sometimes the children asked Eddie to lift them over his head, and when Eddie complied, he saw the mothers' sad smiles: He guessed it was the right lift but the wrong pair of arms.”

“The backside of a mountain is a fight against human nature. You have to care as much about yourself on the way down as you did on the way up.”