“true weanedness from the world don't consist in being beat off from the world by the affliction of it, but a being drawn off by the sight of something better.”

“We're better off. But I don't know if the world's better off. I don't know if the two are the same thing.”

“Where is an intimate friend who’ll hear the secret from me straight out– of what human beings have been from the moment they began? They are born of toil and molded from the clay of sorrow.They wander the world for a time, then set off.”

“It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.”

“Pursue something so important that even if you fail, the world is better off with you having tried.”

“We're no longer young men. We've lost any desire to conquer the world. We are refugees. We are fleeing from ourselves. From our lives. We were eighteen years old, and we had just begun to love the world and to love being in it; but we had to shoot at it. The first shell to land went straight for our hearts. We've been cut off from real action, from getting on, from progress. We don't believe in those things any more; we believe in the war.”