“The next four weeks of solitary confinement were among the happiest of Paul's life...It was so exhilarating, he found, never to have to make any decision on any subject, to be wholly relieved from the smallest consideration of time, meas, or clothes, to have no anxiety ever about what kind of impression he was making; in fact, to be free.”

“Have you at any time been detained in a mental home or similar institution? If so, give particulars.''I was at Scone College, Oxford, for two years,' said Paul.”

“He had no strength for any other war than his own solitary struggle to keep alive.”

“I never see you now,’ she said. ‘I never seem to see anyone I like. I don’t know why.’But she spoke as though it were a matter of weeks rather than of years; as though, too, before our parting we had been firm friends. It was dead contrary to the common experience of such encounters, when time is found to have built its own defensive lines, camouflaged vulnerable points, and laid a field of mines across all but a few well-trodden paths, so that, more often than not, we can only signal to one another from either side of the tangle of wire.”

“...any one who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively at home in prison. It is the people brought up in the gay intimacy of the slums, Paul learned, who find prison so soul destroying.”

“At the door fo the dining-room he left us. 'Good night, Mr Jorkins,' he said. 'I hope you will pay us another visit when you next "cross the herring pond".' 'I say, what did your governor mean by that? He seemed almost to think I was American.' 'He's rather odd at times.”

“I said to the doctor, who was with us daily. 'He's got a wonderful will to live, hasn't he?''Would you put it like that? I should say a great fear of death.''Is there a difference?''Oh dear, yes. He doesn't derive any strength from his fear, you know. It's wearing him out.”