I would like to sit still for a while but I'm restless you know and sitting still is only an ideal like celibacy and complete cleanliness.

How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?

You are not a man anymore. You are a soldier. Your comfort is of no importance and your life isn't of much importance. Most of your orders will be unpleasant, but that's not your business. They should've trained you for this, and not for flower-strewn streets. They should have built your soul with truth, not led along with lies.

How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise - the quality of light, the tone, the habit and the dream - be set down alive?

But a man needs company.

Intentions, good or bad, are not enough. There's luck or fate or something else that takes over.

Boileau said that Kings, Gods and Heroes only were fit subjects for literature. The writer can only write about what he admires. Present-day kings aren't very inspiring, the gods are on a vacation and about the only heroes left are the scientists and the poor.