Nurses - nurses, you'm all the same. Full of cheerfulness over other people's troubles.

I continued to do arithmetic with my father, passing proudly through fractions to decimals. I eventually arrived at the point where so many cows ate so much grass, and tanks filled with water in so many hours. I found it quite enthralling.

It is my experience that no one, in the course of conversation, can fail to give themselves away sooner or later. Everyone has an irresistible urge to talk about themselves.

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.

I've always noticed that if you speak the truth in a rather silly way nobody believes you.

There is no greater mistake in life than seeing things or hearing them at the wrong time.

No sign, so far, of anything sinister—but I live in hope.