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

I had often thought that if I managed to live through the war I wouldn't expect too much of life. How could one resent disappointment in love if life itself was continuously in doubt? Since Belgorod, terror had overturned all my preconceptions, and the pace of life had been so intense one no longer knew what elements of ordinary life to abandon in order to maintain some semblance of balance. I was still unresigned to the idea of death, but I had already sworn to myself during moments of intense fear that I would exchange anything - fortune, love, even a limb - if I could simply survive.

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.

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

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

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

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