My personal opinion is that if someone writes honestly about war, it will inherently be anti-war.

I had the feeling that if I encountered anyone they would intuit my disgrace and would judge me instantly. Nothing is more isolating than having a particular history. At least that’s what I thought. Now I know: all pain is the same. Only the details are different.

I had feared the truth on her behalf and it had not been my right to make that choice for her.

There was no center to the world. The curves of all our bells are cracked.

Towards parties and the banks of streams and ponds, along which young boys would pace out hours in silence after taking the freckled shoulders of those girls into their hands, their hands feeling skin... and not knowing what to do, those same hands folding as if in prayer, praying without even knowing they are praying “God please don’t let the world be always slipping from me.

I would only sit muttering with envy for their broad umbrellas, their dryness, and the sweet, unwounded banality of their lives.

We were not destined to survive. The fact is, we were not destined at all.

To continue, I had to see the world with clear eyes, to focus on the essential. We only pay attention to rare things, and death was not rare.

I can’t envision an honest war novel that left war in a positive light.

Writing was always an aspiration, but I’d kept it a secret even from myself.