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

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.

If I didn't have writing, I'd be running down the street hurling grenades in people's faces.

Those who fought know a secret about themselves, and it is not very nice.

Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected. Every war constitutes an irony of situation because its means are so melodramatically disproportionate to its presumed ends.

Anyone telling about his travels must be a liar, . . . for if a traveler doesn't visit his narrative with the spirit and techniques of fiction, no one will want to hear it.

Exploration belongs to the Renaissance, travel to the bourgeois age, tourism to our proletarian moment.