I wanted something that I could look back on and say, yes, you were fighting too, you burned to be alive, and whatever failure or accident of nature caused you to be killed could be explained by something other than the fact that I'd missed your givi...
All choices are illusions, or if they are not illusions their strength is illusory, for one choice must contend with the choices of all the other men and women deciding anything in that moment.
We were not destined to survive. The fact is, we were not destined at all. The war would take what it could get.
When we neared the orchard a flock of birds lit from its outer rows. They hadn't been there long. The branches shook with their absent weight and the birds circled above in the riddy mackerel sky, where they made an artless semaphore. I was afraid, I...
There is a sharp distinction between what is remembered, what is told and what is true.
I've come to accept that parts of life are constant, that just because something happens on two different days doesn't make it a goddamn miracle.
Nothing is more isolating than having a particular history.
Freedom is not the same as lack of accountability.
And I understood why he came and why I couldn't go, not just then at least, because one never knows if what one sees will disappear forever.
I didn't want to smile and say thanks. Didn't want to pretend I'd done anything except survive
