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

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

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

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.

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

I don't think it's possible to c-call yourself a C-Christian and... and j-just leave out the awkward bits.' -Wilfred Owen

The sky darkened, the air grew colder, but he didn't mind. It didn't occur to him to move. This was the right place. This was where he had wanted to be.

Murder is only killing in the wrong place.

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

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

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

The church’s main task is to fuel having a fulfilled destiny

The car as we know it is on the way out. To a large extent, I deplore its passing, for as a basically old-fashioned machine, it enshrines a basically old-fashioned idea: freedom.

...simple logic tells you that if somebody wants you dead you have one course of action: To get them deader sooner.

It's a nice glass of champagne at the end of a life.

Never compromise and sell yourself short.

Sometimes the simplest pictures are the hardest to get.

Value your words. Each one may be the last.

Endure and save yourselves for happier times.

Principles are eternal.

Really, trees are nearly as important as men, and much better behaved.