Why We Love Mark Helprin (IV)

The problem with war, as I have seen it, is not so much that it makes misery and grief - all of which would tend to come anyway, in time. The sin is in the abruptness, in the abridgement of those stages that otherwise might be joined so brilliantly to make a life.

-- A Soldier of the Great War, X (La Rondine, p. 802)

Why We Love Mark Helprin (III)

When I got back to Rome I discovered that the Italian Army considered me dead - in Gruensee, in the observation post, and on the Cima Bianca. That I was reported killed three times seemed not to affect their trust in the reports except to strengthen it. Being the army, they must have thought that anyone who was killed three times was most certainly deader than if he had been killed only once.

-- A Soldier of the Great War, X (La Rondine, p. 799)

Why We Love Mark Helprin (II)

Alessandro was excited beyond measure at the prospect of seeing sunlight on a tea cup, a family in the park, a beautiful girl walking down a staircase - those things for which all the great battles had been fought, and against which they paled.

-- A Soldier of the Great War, VIII (The Winter Palace, p. 680)