There was, for many of us, a great escape in reading about the fantastic and supernatural during wartime. Terrors more terrible than those we were living through gave us an outlet for our anxiety.

They called it the Great War, but that implied worthiness and grandeur, not violence and helplessness and the utter waste and devastation our country, our city, our people endured.

...books were better than travel.

The handwriting was a girl’s. I mean, you can tell. That enchanted cursive.

Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so.

We are not going to achieve a new world order without paying for it in blood as well as in words and money.

And Zach was taking his jacket off and draping it around my shoulders, which (according to Liz, who double checked with Macey) is the single-sexiest thing a guy can do.

You know, one thing I've learned in my time on this earth Be careful what you wish for.

Nature makes merit, and fortune puts it to work.

I long for typical days, but rarely get them any more.

Courage, the footstool of the Virtues, upon which they stand.

The seeds of Death are sown in us when we begin to live, and grow up till, like rampant weeds, they choak the tender flower of life.