“So many bright futures consigned to the ashes of the past.So many dreams lost in the madness that had engulfed us.Except for a few widely scattered shouts of joy,the survivors of the abyss sat hollow-eyed and silent, trying to comprehend a world without war.”

“The day after the British entered the war Henry James wrote a friend:The plunge of civilization into this abyss of blood and darkness... is a thing that so gives away the whole long age during which we have supposed the world to be, with whatever abatement, gradually bettering, that to have to take it all now for what the treacherous years were all the while really making for and meaning is too tragic for any words.”

“Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected. Every war constitutes an irony of situation because its means are so melodramatically disproportionate to its presumed ends.”

“If truth is the main casualty in war, ambiguity is another.”

“If we do not redefine manhood, war is inevitable.”

“Chickenshit can be recognized instantly because it never has anything to do with winning the war.”

“Wars damage the civilian society as much as they damage the enemy. Soldiers never get over it.”