Fiction should be about moral dilemmas that are so bloody difficult that the author doesn't know the answer. What I hate in fiction is when the author knows better than the characters what they should do.

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

The past is a palimpsest. Early memories are always obscured by accumulations of later knowledge.

Sometimes, in the trenches, you get the sense of something, ancient. One trench we held, it had skulls in the side, embedded, like mushrooms. It was actually easier to believe they were men from Marlborough's army, than to think they'd been alive a year ago. It was as if all the other wars had distilled themselves into this war, and that made it something you almost can't challenge. It's like a very deep voice, saying; 'Run along, little man, be glad you've survived

Half the world's work is done by hopeless neurotics.

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

It's the hardest thing in the world to go on being aware of someone else's pain.