Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?

Why do we not care to acknowledge them? The cattle, the body count. We still don't like to admit the war was even partly our fault because so many of our people died. A photograph on every mantlepiece. And all this mourning has veiled the truth. It's not so much lest we forget, as lest we remember. Because you should realise the Cenotaph and the Last Post and all that stuff is concerned, there's no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it.

I have never understood disliking for war. It panders to instincts already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment.

Clichés can be quite fun. That's how they got to be clichés.

I saw someone peeing in Jermym Street the other day. I thought, is this the end of civilization as we know it? Or is it simply someone peeing in Jermyn Street?

Cloisters, ancient libraries ... I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.

You don't put your life into your books, you find it there.