Travelers learn not just foreign customs and curious cuisines and unfamiliar beliefs and novel forms of government. They learn, if they are lucky, humility.

Travel at its truest is thus an ironic experience, and the best travellers . . . seem to be those able to hold two or three inconsistent ideas in their minds at the same time, or able to regard themselves as at once serious persons and clowns.

The worst thing about war was the sitting around and wondering what you were doing morally.

To get home you had to end the war. To end the war was the reason you fought it. The only reason.

Wars damage the civilian society as much as they damage the enemy. Soldiers never get over it.

If truth is the main casualty in war, ambiguity is another.

Chickenshit can be recognized instantly because it never has anything to do with winning the war.