Favorite quotes directly or inderectly related to my WW II story, "I've Always Loved You."

My true story of ww2 in the Pacific is now on Barnes & Noble. Here's the link: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?WRD=i%27ve+always+loved+you&r=1&box=i%27ve%20always%20loved%20you&pos=-1
I'd like to share the quotes that inspired me. Most relate directly to the war; others are more universal. Thanks for indulging me. The quotes:
To recollect is to reenter and be riven. - Harold Brodky **
I will pray for the emperor's long life and his prosperity forever.- General Yamashita’s last words before execution **
Ah! You are beginning to understand, beginning to see in darkness. My child, it is this simple: love will kill us all.- Thomas Sanchez, Mile Zero**
When I think of leaving my little family alone, I fear death for the first time. It is love on earth that makes us unwilling to give up this life.- Frank Ribbel diary**
`War is sweet to those who have not experienced it.- Erasmus**
Think of the Philippines as bright islands where yellow frangipani grows and the nights are navy blue.Frank Ribbel letter to Mary-HelenAfter it, follow it, follow the gleam- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Crossing the Bar**
The Sun Goddess Amaterasu’s descendants gave birth to earth, sea, heat, and light. The copper mirror had been used by a god to tempt Amaterasu out of her cave so the world would have light; the sword was plucked from a dragon’s tail, and the necklace belonged to the Sun Goddess. - Japanese myth**
Across the sea
Corpses in the water,
Across the mountain,Corpses heaped upon the field,
I shall die only for the EmperorI shall never look back.-
Umi Yakaba, Japanese battle song**
To call Hirohito’s reign ‘Showa’ is a dour irony unmatched in the Nation’s history from the time of our original Ainu inhabitants- Editorial in Mainichi, a Tokyo newspaper**
This, then, was the life I knew, where death sought me- William Manchester, Goodbye Darkness**
(The army’s) nobility and dignity comes from the way men live unselfishly and risk their lives to help each other. - Bill Maudlin, Up Front**
My dearest mother,
I am an empty dream
Like snow left on the mountain in summer.
I feel my warm blood moving inside of meAnd I am reminded that I am living.
My soul will have its home in the rising of the sun. If you feel sad, look at the dawn with all of its beauty.You will find me there. -A sixteen-year-old kamikaze’s farewell poem to his mother**
(Few of us) questioned the duty of boys to cross the seas and fight while girls wrote them cheerful letters from home, girls you knew were still pure because they had let you touch them here but not there, explaining that they were saving themselves for marriage . . all this and the certitude of victory ... led you into battle, and sustained you as you fought, and comforted you if you fell . . - William Manchester, Goodbye Darkness**
Here lie three Americans. What shall we say of them? Shall we say this is a fine thing, that they should give their lives for their country? Or shall we say this is too horrible to look at?- LIFE magazine**
I should say sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the characteristic of all men in any way heroic.- Thomas Carlyle**
So many are dead.I cannot face the emperor.
No words for the families.
But I will drive deepInto the enemy camp.
Wait, young, dead soldiers,I will fight farewell
And follow you soon.- Admiral Yamamoto, last poem **
The painted veil that those who live call life- - W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil**
Hirohito . . and his brothers grew up enacting in play the Russo-Japanese war. As emperor-to-be, Hirohito - “little Michinomiya” - had to be respected in play and could never be the recipient of anger or ill treatment.- Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan**
Finally, we killed them all. There was not much jubilation. We just sat and stared at the sand, and most of us thought of those who were gone - those whom I shall remember as always young, smiling, and graceful, and I shall try to forget how they looked at the end, beyond all recognition. - Lt. Cord Meyer USMCR describing the Battle of Parry Island, the Marshalls, in the Atlantic Monthly**
Only one piece of jewelry ever surpassed rubies for (Hirohito), and that was a Mickey Mouse watch he brought home from a visit to Disneyland thirty years later. He wore it every day and, when he died, lay in his coffin with it still on his wrist.- Sterling and Peggy Seagrave,- The Yamato Dynasty**
Those who can stand - 30 days. Those who can sit up - three weeks.Those who can not sit up - one week. Those who have stopped speaking - two days. Those who have stopped blinking – tomorrow.-Japanese commander’s formula for predicting the non-combat mortality of his troops on Guadalcanal. **
Wisdom comes to us when we look the other way - Chief Smohall of the Perce Nez**
Each good-bye is a drama complete in itself.- LIFE magazine **
Hey, GI Joe, what are you doing out here? You should be home at the farm walking with your girl and getting your chores done, then sitting down to supper. - Tokyo Rose **
Sonno-foi: revere the emperor, drive out the Barbarians.- Yamato slogan**
We, by grace of heaven, Emperor of Japan, seated on the throne of a line unbroken for ages eternal- Emperor Hirohito**
How many times will you remember a certain afternoon, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it?- Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky **
Courage is rightly esteemed as the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others.- - Winston Churchill**
When man is fighting in a war, and his wife wants him to come back to her, hold her in his arms, she knows he has to be part of a grand story, one to tell again and again to fill the emptiness. ** no attribution