With this recitation of paraphernalia and detritus, O'Brien manages to encapsulate the experience of an army and of a particular war, of a mined and booby-trapped landscape, of cold nights and hot days, of soaking monsoons and rice paddies, and of the possibility of being shot, like Ted Lavender, suddenly and out of nowhere: not only in the middle of a sentence but in the midst of a subordinate clause.

But beneath it all will run that Sicilian understanding that the underside of joy is grief, that the face of sacrifice and suffering is the dark mirror image of pleasure and enjoyment, that every moment of arrival is to be treasured and enjoyed in the full knowledge that it has brought us a moment closer to the moment of departure.

We never believe we're beautiful, no matter how many times we hear it. We never believe it until someone says it in the right way.

You aim for what you want and if you don't get it, you don't get it, but if you don't aim, you don't get anything.

People see everything through the lens of their obsessions.

I work really long days and I work seven day weeks.

Words are the raw material out of which literature is crafted.