I hate a cramp, he thought. It is a treachery of one's own body.

In order to write about life first you must live it.

Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?

There is a great inertia about all military operations of any size. But once this inertia has been overcome and underway they are almost as hard to arrest as to initiate.

You don't have to destroy me. Do you?

Before you quit, you have to try

It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of the country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.