“Saigon in utter darkness this last night of the war. A gestating monster. Her letter to Linh had been simple: I love you more than life, but I had to see the end.”

“Last night I'd made love to a woman for the first and last time. It had been amazing and I had a memory that would shape the rest of my life.”

“Long ago she had become more ambitious than feeling. She had fallen in love with images instead of living things. Except for Linh.”

“You are more to me than any of them has any idea; you are the atmosphere of beauty through which I see life; you are the incarnation of all lovely things...I think of you day and night. ~ Letter to Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas”

“Helen's Saigon had always been about selling - chickens, information, or lovely young women, it didn't matter. It had once been called the Pearl of the Orient, but by people who had not been there in a very long time. Saigon had never been Paris, but now it was a garrison town, unlovely, a stinking refugee shantyville filled with the angry, the betrayed, the dispossessed, but she had made it her home, and she couldn't bear that soon she would have to leave.”

“His parting shot to me had been, "I don't want to love someone who is more at home with the monsters than I am." What do you say to that? What can you say? Damned if I know. They say love conquers everything. They lie.”