But I didn't really believe that anything would happen, not to me. Getting hurt was just a choice some people made, like bad luck, or growing old.
This quote reveals the dissociative state in which Philip lives. He seems to live in his own world where he simply looks on other people as curious specimens as they suffer. Pain and suffering are things that happen to other people, not to Philip, in his mind, and this strange disconnect from reality makes such inevitabilities as getting hurt, having bad luck, and growing old seem like voluntary actions taken by fools.
"I don't care what you think," Hubbard said. "You just think what everyone else thinks. Beat it, okay? Leave me alone."
This quote, spoken by Hubbard to Philip, demonstrates Philip's problem with rejection while giving the reader an insight into the mind of this slightly less-than-reliable narrator. Philip, as seen through his thoughts, sees himself as a tough, impersonal man with friends and a sense of justice. In reality, however, he just goes along with everything everyone else does, such as participating in the "blanket party" later that very night. Hubbard sees what Philip can't see about himself, but Philip refuses to hear it, stubbornly stuck in his own foolishness.
But I have moments when I remember that day, and how it felt to be a reckless man with reckless friends. I think of Lewis before he was a thief and Hubbard before he was a deserter. And myself before I was a good neighbor. Three men with rifles.
This quote, taken from the last paragraph of the novel, reveals Philip's mindset regarding his past in the context of his present condition. This whole novel centers around that one night guarding the ammo dump on the Fourth of July, when Philip, Lewis, and Hubble were just three men with rifles. The events of that night temporarily brought them together, and then the rest of the novel describes how they fell apart. Looking back on it, the night of adventure seems like a fond yet troubling memory in Philip's mind, a vague event that precluded a realm of future possibilities.
