We came to realise - first with astonishment, then bitterness, and finally with indifference - that intellect apparently wasn't the most important thing...not ideas, but the system; not freedom, but drill. We had joined up with enthusiasm and with good will; but they did everything to knock that out of us.

The room shall speak, it must catch me up and hold me, I want to feel that I belong here, I want to hearken and know when I go back to the front line that the war will sink down, be drowned utterly in the great home-coming tide, know that it will then be past for ever, and not gnaw us continually, that it will have none but an outward power over us...Nothing stirs; listless and wretched, like a condemned man, I sit there and the past withdraws itself. And at the same time I fear to importune it too much, because I do not know what might happen then. I am a soldier, I must cling to that.

Through the years our business has been killing;-it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of lif eis limited to death.

The coffin, it shall protect me, though Death himself lies in it

... but that's what mankind is like: they only prize what they no longer possess.

Never do anything complicated when something simple will serve as well. It's one of the most important secrets of living.

Life did not intend to make us perfect. Whoever is perfect belongs in a museum.