It was strange how closely we returnees clung together. We were like a family of orphaned children, split by an epidemic and sent to different care centers. That feeling of an epidemic disease persisted. The people treated us nicely, and cared for us tenderly, and then hurried to wash their hands after touching us. We were somehow unclean. We were tainted. And we ourselves accepted this. We felt it too ourselves. We understood why the civilian people preferred not to look at our injuries.

But thats not love, he thought, thats not what she wants, nor what any of them want, they do not want you to find yourself in them, they want instead that you should lose yourself in them. And yet, he thought, they are always trying to find themselves in you.

I’ve owned a thousand houses that I’ve never built,” she said. “Never had the money to build. Couldn’t have used if I had had the money. Never really wanted to build maybe. But I still own the houses.“ – Karen Holmes in From Here To Eternity.

Is it really worth it to die, to be dead, just to prove to everybody that you’re not a coward?

And it seemed to him then that every human was always looking for himself, in bars, in railway trains, in offices, in mirrors, in love, especially in love, for the self of him that is there, someplace, in every other human. Love was not to give oneself, but find oneself, describe oneself.

The little red eyes glared at Prew challenging, almost hoping for some disagreement that would force Old Ike to prove his loyalty to Holmes, Wilson, the Company, and the cause, which might be Better Soldiering; Peacetime Preparedness; or the Perpetuation of An Aristocracy. Nobody could have named the Cause, but then its name was unimportant, as long as the Cause itself remained to levy loyalty.

Billions of hard, bright stars shone with relentless glitter across the tropic night sky.

Love either starves to death and becomes a shadow, or else it dies young and remains a dream.

All right, all.

Being in love made you especially vulnerable.