A man can gasp out his life beside you-and you feel none of it. Pity, Sympathy, sure-but you don't feel the pain. Your belly is whole and that's what counts. A half-yard away someone's world is snuffled out in roaring agony-and you feel nothing. That's the misery of the world.

Keep things at arm's length... If you let anything come too near you want to hold on to it. And there is nothing a man can hold on to.

It's all rot that they put in the war-news about the good humour of the troops, how they are arranging dances almost before they are out of the front-line. We don't act like that because we are in a good humour: we are in a good humour because otherwise we should go to pieces.

Sweet dreams though the guns are booming.

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

Sometimes I used to think that one day i should wake up, and all that had been would be over. forgotten, sunk, drowned. Nothing was sure - not even memory.

Everyone saves someone at least once. Just as he kills someone at least once. Even though he may not know it.