“No one would believe me but at times I would choose wartime in Saigon over peacetime in Alabama."-Inside Out and Back Again”

“This was love, I supposed, and eventually I would come to know it. Someday it would choose me and I would come to know its spell, for long stretches and short, two times, maybe three, and then quite probably it would choose me never again.”

“If the silence in my head lasted, I would never go back. I wouldn’t be the first one to choose this form over the other. Maybe, if I ran far enough away, I would never have to hear again… I pushed my legs faster, letting Jacob Black disappear behind me.”

“I would choose freedom over comfort every time.”

“He'd imagined peacetime would bring him a sense of belonging. During the war it kept him going, that thought of peace. He'd believed in it like a season he knew it would arrive one day”

“I felt amazed at the choosing one had to do, over and over a million times daily--choosing love, then choosing it again...how loving and being in love could be so different.”