There is a sharp distinction between what is remembered, what is told and what is true.

Nothing is more isolating than having a particular history.

We were not destined to survive. The fact is, we were not destined at all. The war would take what it could get.

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.

I looked out the window and saw the street and railroad tracks, the woods beyond. Beyond the woods, the county of which they were a part. And so on, until it all dissolved into the...

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.

Freedom is not the same as lack of accountability.

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...

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...