Forward momentum only worked as a strategy if one had correctly identified which way was forward.

Honesty is the only way with anyone, when you'll be so close as to be living inside each other's skins.

Like integrity, love of life was not a subject to be studied, it was a contagion to be caught. And you had to catch it from someone who had it.

Any man can be kind when he is comfortable. I'd always thought kindness a trivial virtue, therefore. But when we were hungry, thirsty, sick, frightened, with our deaths shouting at us, in the heart of horror, you were still as unfailingly courteous as a gentleman at ease before his own hearth.

How could you be a Great Man if history brought you no Great Events, or brought you to them at the wrong time, too young, too old?

You should have fallen in love with a happy man, if you wanted happiness. But no, you had to fall for the breathtaking beauty of pain.

I don’t duel, boy. I kill as a soldier kills, which is as a butcher kills, as quickly, efficiently, and with as least risk to myself as I can arrange.