Another person's life, observed from the outside, always has a shape and definition that one's own life lacks.

It's the hardest thing in the world to go on being aware of someone else's pain.

You know you're walking around with a mask on, and you desperately want to take it off and you can't because everybody else thinks it's your face.

The past is a palimpsest. Early memories are always obscured by accumulations of later knowledge.

I don't think it's possible to c-call yourself a C-Christian and... and j-just leave out the awkward bits.' -Wilfred Owen

Looking straight at the world is part of your duty as a writer.

The sky darkened, the air grew colder, but he didn't mind. It didn't occur to him to move. This was the right place. This was where he had wanted to be.

Murder is only killing in the wrong place.

Culturally, the First World War is the war that stands in for other wars.

A society that devours its own young deserves no automatic or unquestioning allegiance.

Half the world's work is done by hopeless neurotics.

One of the chief paradoxes of our culture [is] that the welfare of its children, its _future_, is placed almost exclusively in the hands of people of low status, a class it holds in contempt.

Maturity/experience: the beguiling texture of stones subjected to years of furious seas.

Everyone— black as well as white— thinks it's going to be better over the next jump of land.

When you're fighting a crowd, it's good to shout potentially threatening things like "Crossbows!" or "Fire!" or "Giant Flying Cat!" every once in a while.

Time is the coin of your life. You spend it. Do not allow others to spend it for you.

There aren't many pratfalls in comedy anymore.

Fools through false shame, conceal their open wounds.

Our days, our deeds, all we achieve or are, Lay folded in our infancy; the things Of good or ill we choose while yet unborn.

Our work is to keep our hearts open in hell.

Warmblood now a bloodborne death, Will rob your body of it's breath Mark your skin and seal your fate The Underland becomes a plate