“What manner of people they were only books and other people could tell... and the tale was a long and gory one dating from the dim, conjectural dawn of history. But being human they were as apt to change as mother nature to remain constant.”

“So long as one remains in the same condition, the inclinations which result from habit and are the least natural to us can be kept; but as soon as the situation changes, habit ceases and the natural returns. Education is certainly only habit. Now are there not people who forget and lose their education? Others who keep it? Where does this difference come from? If the name nature were limited to habits conformable to nature, we would spare ourselves this garble!”

“Bit by bit [the Second World War] really changed my view of what people were capable of, and therefore what human nature was.”

“I find it odd- the greed of mankind. People only like you for as long as they perceive they can get what they want from you. Or for as long as they perceive you are who they want you to be. But I like people for all of their changing surprises, the thoughts in their heads, the warmth that changes to cold and the cold that changes to warmth... for being human. The rawness of being human delights me.”

“The greatest changes in history have come when people were able to shake off what others told them to do.”

“But the participants [in war] never forgot the details of their experience, and like the Wandering Jew, they were condemned to remain their own history books, each containing a story they could not pass on to others and from which no one would learn anything of value.”