“The more material we lose, the less we have. The less we have, the more we win.”

“You know what Mrs. Shure, the librarian, told me?” “What’s that, Theo?” his father asked.“God does not make junk.”Ted stared into his tumbler, the dwindling ice cubes sloshing at the bottom of the glass. His fidget finger tapped at the glass. Knocking the ice against the wall of the tumbler and turning his face upward, Ted looked at Theo.“Therefore, I am not junk,” said Theo. “Yuh.”“And I came from you. You are not junk either, Dad. Just because you didn’t shoot a gun in France or just because you didn’t become an engineer, doesn’t mean you are any less than any other man. Dad, both you and I have made mistakes, but we are not junk.”