Midnight

Even as a child, she had preferred night to day, had enjoyed sitting out in the yard after sunset, under the star-speckled sky listening to frogs and crickets. Darkness soothed. It softened the sharp edges of the world, toned down the too-harsh colors. With the coming of twilight, the sky seemed to recede; the universe expanded. The night was bigger than the day, and in its realm, life seemed to have more possibilities.

In this world only the paranoid survive.

In the war, to survive, you had to be responsible every minute of every day, unhesitatingly responsible for yourself, for your every action. You had to be responsible for your buddies, too, because survival wasn't something that could be achieved alone. That's maybe the one positive thing about fighting in a war - it clarifies your thinking and makes you realize that a sense of responsibility is what separates good men from the damned.

... our Janice is gone, but you're still here, and your first allegiance should never be to the dead.

The war had left his body pathetically damaged and weak, but his mind was as strong and clear as it had ever been, perhaps even tempered and made stronger by adversity. That, not madness, was his curse.

A man's commitment to others, especially to friends and family, could never be excessive.

Before you know it the hurt will be gone. It won't matter as much as it does now. I promise it won't.

Paraphrasing Shakespeare, Sam thought: the fault lies not in our technology but in ourselves.

Any boy's potential for cruelty paled in comparison to the cruelty of gods.

on errands every day, if only to pick