"He'd have a hell of a time getting anyone to work for him if people knew he might sell them out when that looked like a profitable thing to do. If you had scruples about such things, you didn't belong in Intelligence in the first place."

"The artillery duel between U.S. and C.S. guns started up again, each side feeling for the other in the night. Listening to death fly back and forth overhead was almost like watching a tennis match, except both sides could serve at once and there could be more than one ball in the air at the same time."

"She was willing to give her life for her country. She wasn’t willing to throw it away."

"He still sounded earnest and sincere. Flora still had no doubt he meant every word he said, meant it from the bottom of his heart. She also had no doubt he didn't have any idea how irritating he was to her."

"A wise husband didn’t quarrel even when he was right. Quarreling when you knew you were wrong was a recipe for disaster."

"But when he ached, when he panted, when the world was too much with him, Marx and revolution held a wild temptation. Like cheap booze for a drunk, he thought wearily, except revolutions make people do even stupider things."

"Cincinnatus stared at him. That had to be the most cynical assessment he'd ever heard in his life, and he'd heard a lot of them. But, along with the cynicism, it made a lot more sense than he wished it did."

"Where cool heads had failed, hotheads prevailed."

"Mooers might not have been in the middle of nowhere, but it wasn’t right at the edges, either."

"It was an eminently sensible question. Moss didn't want good sense, though. He wanted to be told what he wanted to hear. That he was thinking like a three-year-old was a telling measure of how tired he was, but he was too tired to realize it."

"During a war, nobody ever showed up on time, except possibly the enemy."

"Armstrong Grimes still had a lot to learn about being a soldier, but he understood shooting first and asking questions later."

"Mirrors reflecting into other mirrors reflecting into other mirrors yet…Intelligence was that kind of game, a chess match with both players moving at the same time and both of them blindfolded more often than not."

"He still couldn't believe she was dead. She’d been one of those fiercely vital people you thought of as going on forever. But life didn't work like that, and war had an obscene power all its own. What it wanted, it took, and an individual’s vitality mattered not at all to it."

"The exec usually did Captain Stein's dirty work for him. The skipper got the credit, the exec got the blame: an ancient Navy rule."

"“‘The Confederate state must make up for what everyone else has neglected in this field. It must set race at the center of all life. It must take care to keep itself pure.’”"

"Sometimes convenience counted for more than ideology."

"Chester almost said so—almost, but not quite. He and Rita had been married a while now. He’d learned a wise man didn't antagonize his wife over something inherently unprovable, especially when she’d just given him breakfast."

"If you happened to end up in the wrong place at the wrong instant, you could be the best soldier in the world and it wouldn't matter one goddamn bit. Your next of kin would get a wire from the War Department, and that would be that."

"“You're lucky as hell, kid,” Moss said, glad to have something to talk about besides the pounding of his heart. “That's only a scratch, and you'll get yourself a Purple Heart on account of it.” “If I'd been lucky, they would have missed me,” the lieutenant said, which held more than a little truth. If he'd been unluckier, though, all the infinite cleverness and articulation of that hand would have been smashed to bloody, bony ruin in less than the blink of an eye."

"But then, how much of war was finding out the hard way what the other fellow had that you didn't know about ahead of time? Put that way, it sounded quietly philosophical. Put another way, it meant Sam was likely to get killed because some dimbulb in Philadelphia was asleep at the switch."

"Sometimes a fellow who’d learned what to do with a rifle in his hands didn't care in which direction he pointed it."

"Where there’s a will, there’s a lawyer."

"His action shows convincingly that there is no chance of expecting that this man will ever give up his practice of using force to gain his will. He can only be stopped by force. We have a clear conscience. We have done all that any country could do to establish peace."

"As happened too often in politics, never turned out not to be so very long after all."

"Only two promotions really mattered: the one up from buck private and the one to general’s rank."

"Everyone marched everywhere at Fort Custer. Armstrong had begun to think Thou shalt march' was in the Bible somewhere right below Thou shalt not kill and Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain—two commandments he was learning more about violating every day."

"He’d escaped the last dragnet as much by luck as by anything else. You could tell a man not to be stupid, and maybe—if he wasn’t stupid to begin with—he’d listen. But how the devil could you tell a man not to be unlucky?"

"Peacetime, though, felt like summertime. Even as you enjoyed it, you knew it wouldn’t last."

"“Death is never dignified.” O’Doull spoke with a doctor’s certainty. “Never. Dignity in death is something we invent afterwards to make the living feel better.”"

"“You see?” he said. “You just wanted me to tell you I was wrong.” “Well, of course,” Anne answered, and poked him in the ribs. “What else does a woman want to hear from a man?” “How about, ‘I love you’? How about, ‘You’re beautiful’?” Potter suggested. “Those are nice, too,” she agreed with a smile. “As far as I’m concerned, though, nothing’s better than, ‘You were right.’”"

"She hated the calendar, hated the mirror and what it showed her every morning. A handsome woman, that’s what you are. She would almost rather have been ugly. Then she wouldn’t have to remember the beauty she had been not so long ago."

"You can have as much fun in a library as you can at the cinema, and it doesn’t cost you anything."

"“Sir, you have been poking your nose into matters that do not concern you,” Abell said. “We discourage that.” We? You have a tapeworm? Dowling wondered."

"The party and the CSA could get by without a lot of fellows who brought only fanaticism. Losing somebody with brains would have hurt much more. Brains were harder to come by."

"“They can’t say anything against the government, not in public they can’t.” “Is it a country or a jail?” Carsten asked. “Near as I can tell, sir,” the second yeoman said, “it’s a jail.”"

"“Hoover is one of the best men we’ve ever had for getting things done,” David said, “and one of the worst for figuring out what to do.”"

"You kill everybody who doesn’t want to see reason, people will get mighty thin on the ground mighty fast."

"Maybe not thinking about the price of failure was what marked a hero. On the other hand, maybe it just marked a damn fool."

"Like a lot of jailers, he was convinced the police who hunted down criminals couldn’t find a skunk if it was spraying their leg."

"But, as often happened, the official and the real had only a nodding acquaintance with each other."

"Manicheism, n., The ancient Persian doctrine of an incessant warfare between Good and Evil. When Good gave up the fight the Persians joined the victorious Opposition."

"“He lies. How can you trust a man who lies? You cannot. And any man who comes on the wireless and says, ‘I am going to tell you the truth’—well, what else can he be except a liar?”"

"“Sir, don’t you think Utah is a special case?” “Every case has partisans who insist it is special,” Hoover answered. “I recognize none of them. I believe none of them. The same principles must apply throughout the United States.”"

"Early summer in Nashville made a good practice ground for hell."

"Some people, though—some people think yelling something loud enough makes it so."

"Beauty didn’t last. Brains did."

"The only happy people she saw coming out of the place were a young couple, the man carrying a crying baby. Maternity wards are different, Nellie thought as she went past them. I bet they’re the only place in a hospital where people win instead of losing."

"That wasn’t even close to fair, and Sylvia knew it. But she’s already seen that political campaigns weren’t designed to be fair. They were designed to convince, by whatever means possible."

"“Your trouble, Major, is that you think people spell prosecute and convict the same way,” Moss said. “That’s not how it works. Even in military court, the defendant’s entitled to a fair shake.”"