“Here was an unknown quantity-a child in breeches with a blue scarf wound around his neck whose job it was to get them out and back alive. This...was the greatest terror of war: what you didn't know of the men who told you what to do-where to go and when. What if they were mad-or stupid? What if their fear was greater than yours? Or what if they were brave and crazy-wanting and demanding bravery from you? He looked away. He thought of being born-and trusting your parents. Maybe that was the same. Your parents could be crazy too. Or stupid. Still-he'd rather his father was with him-telling him what to do. Then he smiled. He knew that his father would take one look at the crater and tell him not to go.”

“When Mrs Ross asked him what he was thinking of, he shrugged. But he was thinking of the time he'd climbed the steeple of a church when he was ten-and had seen, for the very first time, the world spread out around him like a gift.”

“Frederick?Had she really spoken? Certainly she'd tried, but her voice had failed to materialize and all she heard was the sound of her nightgown ripping as Frederick pulled it over her head and threw it aside. He was kneeling now between her ankles, pushing at her, forcing her knees apart and then her arms until she was entirely splayed on the bed beneath him. Nothing was said. Not a word. Ede felt his hand between her legs, forcing the way for the rest of him. Stop, she wanted to tell him. Stop. I don't understand what you're doing. But nothing - still nothing was said. He seemed to be raging inside her, moving his hips in a circular fashion, all the weight of his upper body help above her, resting on his arms, his hands pushing down into the mattress. Stop! But he didn't. Don't! But he did. Nothing. Not one word. The only sound he made was a choking noise in his throat at the end, as tough he might be going to strangle. But when he rolled away from her onto his back, she felt the shudder of his first free breath and she heard him sigh. It was over. Tonight. It was done. Ede could not bare the thought of seeing him, or of being seen. Still without speaking, she rose from the bed and through the dark, found her way to the bathroom. She had brought the torn nightgown wit her, but when she turned on the light and saw it, she threw it down in the corner. Ruined. Spoiled. Everything. When at last, she returned to the bed, Fredrick was sound asleep beneath the covers - and nothing - nothing - nothing was said.”

“What you people who weren't yet born can never know is what it meant to sleep in cities under silent falls of snow when all night long the only sounds you heard were dogs that parked at trains that passed so far away they took a short cut through your dreams and no one even woke. It was the war that changed that. It was. After the Great War for Civilization - sleep was different everywhere...”

“...We must say to ourselves something like this: 'Well, when Jesus looked down from the cross, he didn't think "I am giving myself to you because you are so attractive to me." No, he was in agony, and he looked down at us - denying him, abandoning him, and betraying him - and in the greatest act of love in history, he STAYED. He said, "Father, forgive them, they don't know what they are doing." He loved us, not because we were lovely to him, but to make us lovely. That is why I am going to love my spouse.' Speak to your heart like that, and then fulfill the promises you made on your wedding day.”

“I tell you Charlie, I was there waiting in that field. waiting for Ede and Tom to find me. You don't think two people come together for nothing, do you? They were together because I was waiting to be found..." Then she looked straight into my face and said to me: "You know it, too, Charlie. All that time you waited for me to find you. What if I hadn't? What if I'd said: I won't?" She turned, and clinging to my arm, she surveyed the fields of snow the stretched away to the confining wall.”

“Rodwell wandered into No Man's Land and put a bullet through his ears. On Sunday, Robert sat on his bed in the old hotel at Bailleul and read what Rodwell had written. To my daughter, Laurine;Love your mother. Make your prayers against despair. I am alive in everything I touch. Touch these pages and you have me in your fingertips. We survive in one another. Everything lives forever. Believe it. Nothing dies. I am your father always.”