Understanding the past requires pretending that you don't know the present. It requires feeling its own pressure on your pulses without any ex post facto illumination.

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

Travel sharpens the senses. Abroad one feels, sees and hears things in an abnormal way.

A more or less accurate measure of class in America is TV size: the bigger your TV, the lower your class.

Understanding the past requires pretending that you don't know the present.

So many bright futures consigned to the ashes of the past.So many dreams lost in the madness that had engulfed us.Except for a few widely scattered shouts of joy,the survivors of the abyss sat hollow-eyed and silent, trying to comprehend a world without war.

The middles cleave to euphemisms not just because they're an aid in avoiding facts. They like them also because they assist their social yearnings towards pomposity. This is possible because most euphemisms permit the speaker to multiply syllables, and the middle class confuses sheer numerousness with weight and value.