To forget is the secret of eternal youth. One grows old only through memory. There's much too little forgetting.

At school nobody ever taught us how to light a cigarette in a storm of rain, nor how a fire could be made with wet wood-nor that it is best to stick a bayonet in the belly because there it doesn't get jammed, as it does in the ribs.

They are more to me than life, these voices, they are more than motherliness and more than fear; they are the strongest, most comforting thing there is anywhere: they are the voices of my comrades.

Someone said to me once that a cigarette at the right moment is better than all the ideals in the world.

We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.

The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom.

Come let me kiss you. Life was never so precious as today— when it meant so little.