“Honor from death,” I snap, “is a myth. Invented by the war torn to make sense of the horrific. If we die, it will be so that others may live. Truly honorable death, the only honorable death, is one that enables life.”

“You made me cut and dye my hair.”Surely he understands that we face greater problems? “I thought it would greatly improve your looks,” I snap.“Shorn hair is a sign of shame. You humiliate me greatly.”“I’ll light a candle tonight in honor of your dead tresses.”

“Gently, I reach forward and close her eyes with my fingertips, hoping it will make her seem merely asleep. But the stillness of sleep is nothing at all like the stillness of death.”

“He doesn’t love me yet, but in this place of death, in this precious moment of shared relief, he holds me.”

“In a span of months she had present for birth and for death, the wondrous first breath and the horrible last. But wasn't it an honor to be there at the end of life as well as the beginning? To mark the extraordinariness of a lifetime, to bear witness to its completion?”

“I don’t care if it’s Twilight or Fifty Shades or War and Peace - Never let someone make you ashamed of what you love to read!”

“One thing I have learned from many years of watching my father is that some people, the best ones, are motivated more by the chance to prove themselves than by a command to serve. It is the work itself that calls them onward, especially if they believe they are the only ones who can do it.”