We thought we'd seen it all. The real horror of war is always waiting for you at home. It's waiting, I tell you. We were so damned happy when we got back. We'd made it. We survived. But it's always waiting. Waiting. You let down your guard. And there it is. You can't ever let up. Give up.

Then the truth is this: a good man can only aspire to be worthy of a good woman. She'll always be out of his league in ways he'll never understand. But he'll appreciate what he doesn't understand—if he's smart.

I remembered a definition of chivalry I'd heard once: a man protecting a woman against every man but himself.

Again, no disrespect intended, but she looked to me like a divorce that hadn't found a courtroom yet.

Like a carpenter with two broken legs at the bottom of a beautiful staircase. Maybe I can't climb the stairs, ma'am, but at least let me admire the workmanship.

In all those stories about people who sold their souls to the devil, I never quite understood why the devil was the bad guy, or why it was okay to screw him out of his soul. They got what they wanted: fame, money, love, whatever—though usually it turned out not to be what they really wanted or expected. Was that the devil's fault? I never thought so. Like John Wayne said, "Life's tough. It's even tougher when you're stupid.

History has a way of chasing gravity just like water, feeding into other parts of itself to become something else, something larger and grander, until the one pure thing it was no longer exists.

Sometimes the smallest things are so damn unforgivable. Maybe because they aren't small—they only seem that way to someone else. You never know what someone holds scared until it's too late.

of the few certainties I've come across in life, one of them is that when a person says money is no object, the opposite is most likely true. Money is the only object—or will be.

Rich people always had someone to call who could arrange something that the average guy couldn't get done, no matter how right or wrong. The only call the poor man could make was to Jesus. If Jesus didn't answer, Smith and Wesson always did.

Mr. Welper, of the few certainties I've come across in life, one of them is that when a person says money is no object, the opposite is most likely true. Money is the only object—or will be.

Men were often far different in their roles as fathers than they were as suitors, the memories of which kept them, out of necessity, both vigilant and violent, and even in tender moments, to their daughters.

Like every other house-renting, paycheck-to-paycheck, heel dragging working American, it wouldn't matter if I stepped in it by accident or was pushed, or simply whiffed it as I walked by. With the powers in play, guilt or innocence had nothing to do with anything.

Why don't people with money and power realize that when they screw around with the little guy when they don't have to—especially when it's a little guy like me with not a damn thing to lose—sometimes the little guy is just going to get pissed off and stubborn up?

Imagination is one of the few things a man can count on if he's got the reality to feed it.

My instinct told me that she didn't want me to understand. What she felt and lived with couldn't be shared or understood by anyone else.

This was the desert, everything all at once, whether it was needed or not. What survived had learned to save, live carefully, and keep a low profile, even appear to be dead for long periods. Perseverance and patience.

If someone you love asks you to give up something you love, don't do it.

Maybe it was being orphaned and alone all my life, but I always steeled for the worst outcome I could envision. That way I could shrug and be almost happy with anything that fell short of the worst. It was a peculiar life skill and one I had gotten damn good at.