“But no one walks out of his family without reprisals: a family is too disciplined an army to offer compassion to its deserters.”

“The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, lies in its loyalty to each other.”

“An army cannot be built without reprisals. Masses of men cannot be led to death unless the army command has the death-penalty in its arsenal. So long as those malicious tailless apes that are so proud of their technical achievements—the animals that we call men—will build armies and wage wars, the command will always be obliged to place the soldiers between the possible death in the front and the inevitable one in the rear. And yet armies are not built on fear. The Tsar's army fell to pieces not because of any lack of reprisals. In his attempt to save it by restoring the death-penalty, Kerensky only finished it. Upon the ashes of the great war, the Bolsheviks created a new army. These facts demand no explanation for any one who has even the slightest knowledge of the language of history. The strongest cement in the new army was the ideas of the October revolution, and the train supplied the front with this cement.”

“A Family Caregiver stays when the rest of the world walks out.”

“Rebellion without reprisal is one of democracy's perks, right?”

“Was that what Nell had done, too? Forsaken the life and the family she'd been given, to focus instead on the one she'd been without.”