I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.

The popular idea that a child forgets easily is not an accurate one. Many people go right through life in the grip of an idea which has been impressed on them in very tender years.

Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend.

Bitterness leads nowhere. It turns back on itself. It is the eternal cul-de-sac.

That was what, ultimately, war did to you. It was not the physical dangers--the mines at sea, the bombs from the air, the crisp ping of a rifle bullet as you drove over a desert track. No, it was the spiritual danger of learning how much easier life was if you ceased to think.

That is why most great love stories are tragedies.

Bottled, was he?" Said Colonel Bantry, with an Englishman's sympathy for alcoholic excess. "Oh, well, can't judge a fellow by what he does when he's drunk? When I was at Cambridge, I remember I put a certain utensil - well - well, nevermind.