“If I learned anything in this life, I've learned that you can't cling on.”

“One day," she told us, "you'll have to leave here and go out into the big world out there and earn your living like everyone else. To do that you need to learn. The more you learn now, the more interesting your life will be.”

“He never reckoned much to schooling and that. He said you could learn most what was worth knowing from keeping your eyes and ears peeled. Best way of learning, he always said, was doing.”

“Wars become history all too soon and are forgotten all too soon as well, before the lessons can be learned.”

“If there's one thing I can't abide it's fanatics of any kind, and religious ones are the worst of all.”

“When you're young you can't work out the age of an adult - they're just quite old, old, or very old.”

“But just as soon as this war's over and finished with,I'll get back home and marry her.I've grown up with her, Joey, known her all my life. S'pose I know her almost as well as I know myself, and I like her a lot better.”