The true moments of one's life were sadder for the fact that they must always be synchronized with the ordinary: with rail timetables, with breaks in traffic.

Life took longer to reassemble than it did to blow apart, but that didn't mean it wouldn't be lovely, providing that one remembered to go for country walks, and to tune the wireless to music.

One could always imagine that one's life, though smoldering in parts, might be undamaged in the west.

But what good is it to teach a child to count, if you don't show him that he counts for something?

They spoke of small things at first, since it was best, when reattaching threads, to begin with the easiest knots.

People spoke in whispers, as if the war was listening

She knew, now, why her father had not spoken of the last war, nor Alistair of his. It was hardly fair on the living.

I suppose we ought to be getting home, in any case.”“Oh god, is it wartime already?”“Look on the bright side: it’ll be dinner when we get back.

The first problem of war was that no one was any good at it yet.

Then I’m tempted to die just to … spite him.”“That’s the spirit that will win us the war.

There in the sweet sacking smell of the mail bags he understood that he was dying, and it pleased him that he was going in the company of so many soft words home.

Please don't obsess on the number of friends i have or don't have. I'll find my own way, it will be right for me.

Pull himself together? This was a man who looked permanently cemented together.

What the world really needs is more love and less paper work.

The analogy I like is this imagine being able to see the world but you are deaf, and then suddenly someone gives you the ability to hear things as well - you get an extra dimension of perception.

At their first appearance innovators have always been derided as fools and mad men.

The nice thing about having relatives' kids around is that they go home.

All sorts of flowers the which on earth do spring In goodly colours gloriously arrayed; Go to my love, where she is careless laid

In the long, sleepless watches of the night, A gentle face the face of one long dead Looks at me from the wall, where round its head The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.

Life should be larger than life. Size is important to escape normalization.

I had a 20-year, stellar government career.