The Sleeping Soldier Quotes

“Carefully, stealthily, Caleb added this photograph to the portraits of Russell and Julia. Then, calm as anything, he slipped them into his backpack, tucking them in the front cover of John Halifax, Gentleman, so they wouldn’t get crumpled. Russell needed them more than the archive, anyway.”
― Aster Glenn Gray, The Sleeping Soldier

“​The past is another country; they speak a different language there. Their words may look the same as ours, but they are full of different meanings, and the feelings of the heart are as difficult to translate as poetry. Therefore, let them speak for themselves.”
― Aster Glenn Gray, The Sleeping Soldier

“Dear Russell,
Please don’t fall in love with Mrs. Smith’s niece. I—
Caleb’s dash crossed the entire page. Then he filled up the rest of the sheet with doodles, drawing stars and spirals and little tic-tac-toe boards.
I love you, he wrote at the bottom, in tiny letters. I want to be with you. I want you to wait for me till I’m ready, and I can’t ask because for all I know you’d be waiting till doomsday, because I don’t know how to accept
He wrote a series of dashes. He scribbled some more stars. He flipped over the page, and wrote on the back:
that you might leave me. That it might not last. And also that it might last, it might be real, it might be something I have to tell my parents about one day, I might have to choose you over the entire rest of the world.
That I might choose you over the entire rest of the world, and you might change your mind.
He could not look at it anymore. He flipped the paper back over, and wrote one more sentence among the scattered stars.
But I am going to try.”
― Aster Glenn Gray, The Sleeping Soldier

“Caleb, you say platonically like you think it doesn’t count. He loves you. He loves you more than most of the people you’ll ever sleep with will. My God, I like you fine, and I guess I’d die for you if I had to, but I wouldn’t be happy about it. Russell would jump in front of a bullet to prevent it from grazing your hair, and he’d consider himself well repaid if he died in your arms.”
― Aster Glenn Gray, The Sleeping Soldier

“Dearest best Caleb. Though I should live to be a hundred, I could never repay you for your loving steadfast friendship. From the first moment of our first meeting you had the pity of an angel for me, and stood by me in all my darkest hours. If I wrote these words with the quill of a phoenix dipped in an ink of fire, I could never capture the strength of the love that I bear you.”
― Aster Glenn Gray, The Sleeping Soldier

“What do you people have against punctuation, Caleb? You haven't *lived* till you've used a dash and a semicolon in the same sentence.”
― Aster Glenn Gray, The Sleeping Soldier

“As with so many of my books, The Sleeping Soldier grew from an observation in George Chauncey’s Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. Chauncey notes that when historians discuss passionate male friendship in 19th century America, they often “mistake the fact that men who passionately and physically expressed their love for other men were considered normal for their having been considered heterosexual, as if it were not the very inconsistency of their emotional lives with contemporary models of heterosexuality that made them seem curious to historians in the first place.”
― Aster Glenn Gray, The Sleeping Soldier

“like the long descriptions that you don’t get anymore, and the way that Dickens will use six adjectives when he could use just one, and the meandering plots. And—and I like how emotional old books are,” Caleb admitted, wriggling in embarrassment. “I feel like people actually are that emotional, and characters in modern books are too restrained.”
― Aster Glenn Gray, The Sleeping Soldier

“What had it been like for those boys, that transitional generation? Lying in bed, whispering secrets with a best friend, holding hands, kissing cheeks, age-old patterns of friendship that no longer seemed quite so innocent… ​Why hadn’t they fought harder to keep it? ​Why had it been taken away at all?”
― Aster Glenn Gray, The Sleeping Soldier

“What do you people have against punctuation, Caleb? You haven’t lived till you’ve used a dash and a semicolon in the same sentence.”
― Aster Glenn Gray, The Sleeping Soldier

“Of course you sing different songs than we did, you have a different president, you dress in different fashions. I knew these things would change. But I would have thought feelings were feelings and always the same, and it turns out they are as changeable as popular songs. Maybe that is why the songs change,” Russell said. “Each generation needs its own songs, because each generation has a different heart.”
― Aster Glenn Gray, The Sleeping Soldier

“But even as he clung to Carol, even as he swore to himself he loved her, Caleb pursued a summer job in Chicago. Cities, he knew, were the place to meet other men like him. Even in his own mind he couldn’t bring himself to put it more clearly than that.”
― Aster Glenn Gray, The Sleeping Soldier

“If we stay together, I mean. I know we won't, "he said, his eyes on the water, "but if we did - you'd be giving up on marriage. The chance to have a family. A place in society.""Oh, Freckles. I'll always be outside. Why, it was just last week I learned about Mickey Mouse.”
― Aster Glenn Gray, The Sleeping Soldier

“If I wrote these words with the quill of a phoenix dipped in an ink of fire, I could never capture the strength of the love that I bear you.”
― Aster Glenn Gray, The Sleeping Soldier

“My parents didn’t approve of the match. She wasn’t as rich as they wanted.” Russell cleared his throat, glancing very briefly at Dan. “But it was worth it,” he said. “Even though my folks cast me off, and we didn’t live to wed—it was worth it to love her so much.”
― Aster Glenn Gray, The Sleeping Soldier

“Only a courageous man could battle all of society on his lonesome. Most of us need a regiment at our backs.'

'I have a regiment,' Caleb pointed out. 'The only thing that gave me the courage to admit all this to myself was meeting other queer men.”
― Aster Glenn Gray, The Sleeping Soldier