“If [pacifists] imagine that one can somehow "overcome" the German army by lying on one's back, let them go on imagining it, but let them also wonder occasionally whether this is not an illusion due to security, too much money and a simple ignorance of the way in which things actually happen.”

“It was too much work to remember things you might not have again, and so one by one they opened up their hands and let them go.”

“Let him go. Let one of them go. Knowing it and doing it, two separateaccomplishments. Let one man go. The question had to be, which one?”

“It’s funny you bring that up,” I said. “In some countries, red hair was considered a sign of witchcraft. They actually burned people at the stake for it. Can you imagine? Just goes to show that a little ignorance can go a long way—if you let it go unchallenged, that is.”

“That didn’t happen, of course. Things never happened the way I imagined them.”

“They had parted as boys, and now life presented one of them with a fugitive and the other with a dying man. Both wondered whether this was due to the cards they'd been dealt or to the way they had played them.”