The list of cities lost was long and disheartening, even granting exaggeration by the reporters. Soldiers defeated always overestimate the strength o… - Glen Cook

I don't get the Kina story. If she died back at the beginning of the world, how could she be giving us trouble for the last twenty or thirty years?"
"It's religion, dimwit," Goblin barked. "It don't got to make sense.

It doesn't make much sense, does it?" my darling whispered to me. "People go at the oddest times and from the oddest causes."
"Soldiers live," I muttered.
"You're turning that into a mantra."
"You feel guilty. You wonder why him and not me, then you're glad it was him and not you, then you feel guilty. Soldiers live. And wonder why.

“We all do that. In every day life it’s called making excuses.” True, raw motives are too rough to swallow. By the time most people reach my age, they have glossed their motives so often and so well they fall completely out of touch with them.