“Don’t reject something just because it seems strange. It’s comfort that will kill you in the end.”

“It might seem strange to start a story with an ending. But all endings are also beginnings. We just don’t know it at the time.”

“It’s a good thing when you don’t dare do something if you don’t think it’s right. But it’s not good when you think something’s not right because you don’t dare do it.”

“Strange as it may seem—or perhaps it does not seem so strange—they all had the same thought: it was so much easier to kill humans on the battlefield than animals in cages, even if, on the battlefield, one might end up being killed oneself.”

“Just that maybe … maybe you don’t want to change the story, because you don’t know what a different ending holds.”

“In your thirties something strange starts to happen. It’s a mere hiccup at first, an instant of hesitation. How old are you? Oh, I’m — you start confidently, but then you stop. You were going to say thirty-three, but you’re not. You’re thirty-five. And then you’re bothered, because you wonder if this is the beginning of the end. It is, of course, but it’s decades before you admit it.”