No one starts a war – or rather, no one in his senseought to do so – without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how heintends to conduct it. <br>- Carl Von Clausewitz, Vom Kriege

pg. 54

Anna

::My mother moves so fast I do not even see it coming. But she slaps my face hard enough to make my head snapbackward. She leaves a print that stains me long after it’s faded. Just so you know: shame is five-fingered.

pg. 93

Jessie

::Anna is the only proof I have that I was born into this family. Instead of dropped off on the doorstep by some Bonnie andClyde couple that ran off into the night. On the surface, we’re polar opposites. Under the skin, though, we’re the same:people think they know what they’re getting, and they’re always wrong.

pg. 236

Anna

::If there was a religion of Annaism, and I had to tell you how humans made their way to Earth, it would go like this: in thebeginning, there was nothing at all but the moon and the sun. And the moon wanted to come out during the day, but therewas something so much brighter that seemed to fill up all those hours. The moon grew hungry, thinner and thinner, untilshe was just a slice of herself, and her tips were as sharp as a knife. By accident, because that is the way most thingshappen, she poked a hole in the night and out spilled a million stars, like a fountain of tears.Horrified, the moon tried to swallow them up. And sometimes this worked, because she got fatter and rounder. But mostlyit didn’t, because there were just so many. The stars kept coming, until they made the sky so bright that the sun got jealous. He invited the stars to his side of the world, where it was always bright. What he didn’t tell them, though, was thatin the daytime, they’d never be seen. So the stupid ones leaped from the sky to the ground, and they froze under theweight of their own foolishness.The moon did her best. She carved each of these blocks of sorrow into a man or a woman. She spent the rest of her timewatching out so that her other stars wouldn’t fall. She spent the rest of her time holding on to whatever scraps she hadleft.

pg. 332

Brian

::Jessie’s breathing evens against me, like it used to when he was so small, when I used to carry him upstairs after he’dfallen asleep in my lap. He used to hit me over and over with questions:

What’s a two-inch hose for; a one-inch? How come you wash the engines? Does the can man ever et to drive?

I realize that I cannot remember exactly when hestopped asking. But I do remember feeling as if something had gone missing, as if the loss of a kid’s hero worship canache like a phantom limb.

pg. 380

Brian

::Two thousand years ago the night sky looked completely different, and so when you get right down to it, the Greekconceptions of star signs as related to birth dates are grossly inaccurate for today’s day and age. It’s called the Line of procession: back then the sun didn’t set in Taurus, but in Gemini. A September 24 birthday didn’t mean you were a Libra,but a Virgo. And there was a thirteenth zodiac constellation, Ophichus and the Serpent Bearer, which rose betweenSagittarius and Scorpio for only four days.The reason it’s all off kilter? The earth’s axis wobbles. Life isn’t nearly as stable as we want it to be.

pg. 382

Brian

::Things don’t always look as they seem. Some stars, for example, look like bright pinholes, but when you get them peggedunder a microscope for find you’re looking at a globular cluster-a million stars that, to us, presents as a single entity. On aless dramatic note there are triples, like Alpha Centauri, which up close turns out to be a double star and a red dwarf inclose proximity.There’s an indigenous tribe in Africa that tells of life coming from the second star in Alpha Centauri, the one no one cansee without a high-powered observatory telescope. Come to think of it, the Greeks, the Aboriginals, and the Plains Indiansall lived continents apart and all, independently, looked at the same septuplet knot of the Pleiades and believed them tobe seven young girls running away from something that threatened to hurt them.Make of it what you will.

pg. 384

Campbell

::“You don’t love someone because they’re perfect,” she says. “You love them in spite of the fact that they’re not.”

pg. 415

Brian

::There are stars in the night sky that look brighter than the others, and when you look at them through a telescope yourealize you are looking at twins. The two stars rotate around each other, sometimes taking nearly a hundred years to do it.They create so much gravitational pull there’s no room around for anything else. You might see a blue star, for example,and realize only later that it has a white dwarf as a companion-that first one shines so bright, by the time you notice thesecond one, it’s really too late.

Brother, I am fireSurging under ocean floor.I shall never meet you, brother-Not for years, anyhow;Maybe thousands of years, brother Then I will warm you,Hold you close, wrap you in circles,Use you and change you-Maybe thousands of years, brother.- Carl Sandburg, “Kin” My candle burns at both ends;It will not last the night;But ah, my foes, and of, my friends-It gives a lovely light! - Edna St, Vincent Millay,“First Fig”, A Few Figs from ThistlesI will read ashes for you, if you ask me.I will look in the fire and tell you from the gray lashes And out of the red and black tongues and stripes,I will tell how fire comes And how fire runs as far as the sea.-Carl Sandburg,“Fire Pages” You, if you were sensible,When I tell you the stars flash signals, each one dreadful,You would not turn and answer me“The might is wonderful.” - D.H. Lawrence“Under the Oak”