To talk, simply to talk! It sounds so little, and how much it is! When you have existed to the brink of middle age in bitter loneliness, among people to whom your true opinion on every subject on earth is blasphemy, the need to talk is the greatest of all needs.

The words kept coming back to him, statement of a mystical truth and a palpable absurdity.

He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.

When I joined the militia I had promised myself to kill one Fascist - after all, if each of us killed one they would soon be extinct.

It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda tours.

But the thought of being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him; the horror was that he might also be wrong.

When I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.