"Christ--the quickest way to send a bloke mad is to let him go on re-fighting his war till he gets it right."
- M.L. Stedman
"I shouldn't have spoken like that.''People do, sometimes. People who've had less to contend with than you. We're not always in full control of our actions."
"Other blokes might take advantage, but to Tom, the idea of honor was a kind of antidote to some of the things he'd lived through."
"Being over there changes a man. Right and wrong don't look so different anymore to some."
"That's how life goes on - protected by the silence that anesthetizes shame."
"It is a luxury to do something that serves no practical purpose: the luxury of civilization."
"Then he remembered Ralph's words--"no point in fighting your war over and over until you get it right."
"The oceans never stop. They know no beginning or end. The wind never finishes. Sometimes it disappears, but only to gather momentum from somewhere else, returning to fling itself at the island, to mak..."
"This focusing outward...painful as it was, saved her from a more intolerable examination."