“And that was my homecoming. It was fine, I guess. Getting back feels like your first breath after nearly drowning. Even if it hurts, it’s good.”— Phil Klay
“We carry the world. They did. All those young men did. They carried the world, and it was heavy, and they didn’t know what to do with it. Was this the rest? Was this the war? Things had already spun out of control and they weren’t always as black and white or as right or wrong as Nick liked to think.”— Matthew J. Hefti
“I’m obsessed with trying to recount events as accurately and honestly as possible, but in practice the only thing I’m really any good at is telling you how I feel.”— Jason Christopher Hartley
“Above everything else, beyond the long hardships, one out- come is the most invaluable. The sisterhoods. The lifelong friends and bonds that will never lessen. Years can go by, and I will pick up with each of those sisters as if a single day hasn’t passed. Only we can truly understand one another; not even our husbands can fully grasp what we’ve been through with each other and how ironclad those bonds are.”— Angela Ricketts
“The world he had left was not ready for his return, or rather, he was not ready to return to the world he had left.”— Matthew J. Hefti
“I did exactly what you told me to do, Nick. Didn’t you tell me to just write the stupid book already? And that even doing the worst thing on the planet had to count for something? Well I can’t think of anything worse than what I’m about to do, which is why I think you deserve an explanation. And maybe after you read it you’ll realize why I don’t have the hope that you have. The truth is this: We begin and end alone.”— Matthew J. Hefti
“Oh God, what do we do?””Do?” Levi said, looking oddly triumphant, like his plans for the night had finally materialized, Like he had been hoping for some disaster like this to happen so he didn’t have to be bored anymore. Like even a dying girl in his bathtub was better than calling his mother to confirm that his grandfather actually was dead, and that what he had heard on the answering machine wasn’t a mere auditory hallucination. “We save her, of course.”— Matthew J. Hefti
“Most likely, they were writing the same type of macho bullshit that I wrote, trying to sound tough with their words in case words were all that made it home.”— Clint Van Winkle
“As he moves through his day, sometimes he stops and just stares at me. There is something on the tip of his tongue. But he doesn’t say it. I’m not sure he knows what it is.”— Melissa Seligman
“There is no way to imagine what it feels like to be shot at. I will never be with him when he is the most scared.”— Melissa Seligman
“My wife is alone in our full bed too. Her husband, the father of her children, never came back from Iraq. When I deployed the first time she asked her grandmother for advice. Her grandfather served in Africa and Europe in World War II. Her grandmother would know what to do.“How do I live with him being gone? How do I help him when he comes home?” my wife asked. “He won’t come home,” her grandmother answered. “The war will kill him one way or the other. I hope for you that he dies while he is there. Otherwise the war will kill him at home. With you.” My wife’s grandfather died of a heart attack on the living-room floor, long before she was born. It took a decade or two for World War II to kill him. When would my war kill me?”— Brian Castner
“But the shock wears off, more quickly for some, but eventually for most. Fast food and alcohol are seductive, and I didn’t fight too hard. Your old routine is easy to fall back into, preferences and tastes return. It’s not hard to be a fussy, overstuffed American. After a couple of months, home is no longer foreign, and you are free to resume your old life. I thought I did. Resume my old life, that is. I was wrong.”— Brian Castner
“I hate myself that I wasn’t there for him. I hate that I could not feel it in him. How could I not know what had happened? How could I not hear it in his voice, his comments, or in his demeanor? He needed my help, and I couldn’t feel it.”— Melissa Seligman
“You’ll never let me go, will you? Giving me the space and freedom I want isn’t your idea of love, is it? You’d rather cut me deep on earth to spare me pain in hell, whereas I think hell is right here.”— Matthew J. Hefti
“What was it like? Hell if I know. But next time someone asks…. I’ll answer crooked, and I’ll answer long. And when they get confused or angry, I’ll smile. Finally, I’ll think. Someone who understands.”— Matt Gallagher