"Every wife wanted to cry out 'Well, my God! The machine broke! What makes any of you think you would have come out of it any better?' Yet intuitively Jane and the rest of them knew it wasn't right even to suggest that. Pete never indicated for a moment that he thought any such thing could possibly happen to him. It seemed not only wrong but dangerous to challenge a young pilot's confidence by posing the question. And that, too, was part of the unofficial protocol for the Officer's Wife." Chap. 1, p. 13

"Sometimes, when the young wife of a fighter pilot would have a little reunion with the girls she went to school with, an odd fact would dawn on her; they had not been going to funerals." Chap. 2, p. 22

"As to what this ineffable quality was... well, it obviously involved bravery. But it was not bravery...