“...brooding only feeds the strange pleasure of melancholy...”

“He had illuminated the heartbreaking cruelty of war: When men who fight become nothing, only packages of bones and blood deposited in the earth with no clarion call to memory, those they love are left without a way to make such devastating loss hold meaning.”

“The women who went to the field, you say... A few names were writ, and by chance live to-day;But's a perishing record fast fading away,Of those we recall, there are scarcely a score...And what would they do if war came again?...They would stand with you now, as they stood with you then,The nurses, consolers, and saviors of men.”

“I was seeing what a writer can do with the tatters of truth, the unfinished stories that give us no rest. ”

“I continued up the stairs, this time on wings, suspecting for the first time that Louisa's book might outlive us all. ”

“We're all strange in our own strange way.”

“Strange enlightenments are vouchsafed to those who seek the higher places.”