You are a mousetrap of a friend, all soft cheese and hard springs

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.

The destinies of all followers lie in the hands of their leaders.

There is but one just use of power, and it is to serve people.

To read a novel is to wonder constantly, even at moments when we lose ourselves most deeply in the book: How much of this is fantasy, and how much is real?

To be truthful, I think golfers are overpaid. It's unreal, and I have trouble dealing with the guilt sometimes.

We have won an armistice on a single battlefield, not peace in our world. We may not now relax our guard nor cease our quest.

I'm very fond of drugs.

If you go back 150 years you are a reactionary; but if you go back 1000 years, you are in the foremost ranks of progress.

Nothing turns to hate so bitter as what once was love.

I think Donald Trump laid out a series of priorities that doesn't end with border security, it begins with border security.

All the destruction in Christian Europe has arisen from deism, which is natural religion.