Only happy people have nightmares, from overeating. For those who live a nightmare reality, sleep is a black hole, lost in time, like death.

I have used the words and expressions which my experiences from Minsk to Kharkov to the Don suggested to me. But I should have reserved those words and expressions for what came later, even though they are not strong enough. It is a mistake to use intense words without carefully weighing and measuring them, or they will have already been used when one needs them later. It's a mistake, for instance, to used the word frightful to describe a few broken up companions mixed into the ground: but it's a mistake that might be forgiven.

Men who have embraced one idea can live only by and for that idea. Beyond it, they have nothing but their memories.

The problems I had existed before I did, and I discovered them.

No time to spare: the expression assumed its full significance, as so many expressions do in wartime.

A day came when I should have died, and after that nothing seemed very important. So I have stayed as I am, without regret, separated from the normal human condition.

Then there was the war, and I married it because there was nothing else when I reached the age of falling in love.