Harry Turtledove

She was only eight years old, and still confused the way things should have been with the way they were.

What should matter and what does matter, monsieur, are not one and the same thing, I regret to say.

When you were fifteen, you knew everything always turned out fine in the end. Arthur McGregor was a good deal past twice fifteen. He knew how foolish you were at that age.

The lad was at an age where he was inclined to believe things would turn out as he wanted for no better reason than that he wanted them to turn out so.

He truly did not seem to realize that terrorizing everyone who was not ardently on his side to begin with would ensure that he drew few new supporters.

At sixteen, you knew you could do the impossible.

At forty-three, you knew damn well you couldn’t.

The countryside looked as if hell had been there, but had gone away on vacation.

Something does stink down in Richmond. If we try to root it out now, we are liable to lose the war in the confusion that would follow. But if we don’t try to root it out, we are liable to lose the war from the confusion it causes.

“What is the younger generation coming to?” she exclaimed: the cry of the older generation throughout recorded history.

“We’d never—” Alexander began, but he didn’t finish the sentence. When you were in a war, who could say what you might be driven to do?

That was something else war was about: not caring.

He’d learned to strip and clean and reassemble the machine gun till he could do it with his eyes closed. It was an elegantly simple means of killing large numbers of men in a hurry, assuming that was what you wanted to do.