Quotes from Patricia O'Brien

He had illuminated the heartbreaking cruelty of war: When men who fight become nothing, only packages of bones and blood deposited in the earth with no clarion call to memory, those they love are left without a way to make such devastating loss hold meaning.

The women who went to the field, you say... A few names were writ, and by chance live to-day; But's a perishing record fast fading away, Of those we recall, there are scarcely a score... And what would they do if war came again?... They would stand with you now, as they stood with you then, The nurses, consolers, and saviors of men.

I was seeing what a writer can do with the tatters of truth, the unfinished stories that give us no rest.

I continued up the stairs, this time on wings, suspecting for the first time that Louisa's book might outlive us all.

brooding only feeds the strange pleasure of melancholy...