Pages 59-81

Pg. 78
"Though it's odd, you're never more alive than when you're almost dead. You recognize what's valuable. Freshly, as if for the first time, you live what's best in yourself and in the world, all that might be lost. At the hour of dusk you sit at your foxhole and look out on a wide river turning pinkish red, and at the mountains beyond, and although in the morning you must cross the river and go into the mountains and do terrible things and maybe die, even so, you find yourself studying the fine colors on the river, you feel wonder and awe at the setting of the sun, and you are filled with a hard, aching love for how the world could be and always should be, but now is not."

I thought that this quote was significantly important to the book because of the emotion it gives off. These true words from a soldier had a great impact on me as I was reading. This paragraph talks positively about the war and it's daily routine. He's accepting the fact that he may have to do "terrible things" or even die but in the mean time he admires the beauty of nature. Even though war may be seen as a part of human nature, there is a difference between how humans behave and how the rest of the environment behaves. In this quote he explains how the beauty of nature is much more important than human nature.

Pg. 81
"It wasn't a war story. It was a love story. But you can't say that. All you can do is tell it one more time, patiently, adding and subtracting, making up a few things to get at the real truth."

I wanted to share this quote because of the truth behind it. I think a lot of people can relate to this, because I'm not sure that I've ever met a completely honest person! This quote truly explains the reality of passing on a story.