You know you're walking around with a mask on, and you desperately want to take it off and you can't because everybody else thinks it's your face.

A society that devours its own young deserves no automatic or unquestioning allegiance.

Culturally, the First World War is the war that stands in for other wars.

Another person's life, observed from the outside, always has a shape and definition that one's own life lacks.

We are Craiglockhart's success stories. Look at us. We don't remember, we don't feel, we don't think - at least beyond the confines of what's needed to do the job. By any proper civilized standard (but what does that mean now?) we are objects of horror. But our nerves are completely steady. And we are still alive.

Looking straight at the world is part of your duty as a writer.

Murder is only killing in the wrong place.