“If you're mad enough to have killed a dozen people you're mad enough to be a fraction impatient. Surely?”

“A bit of the vagueness of music stops you going completely mad, I imagine.”

“The more you're challenged, the more rigidly you assert your beliefs. You have nothing to lose because without your beliefs you're nothing anyway: they make you what you are. It's shit or bust.”

“I never for a moment considered killing myself, because it wouldn't have achieved anything.”

“And in that history you're trying to connect to something that once was yours - to something purer, better, something that you lost or something, maybe, that you never knew but that you feel you knew.”

“The men loved jokes, though they had heard each one before. Jack's manner was persuasive; few of them had seen the old stories so well delivered. Jack himeself laughed a little, but he was able to see the effect his performance had on his audience. The noise of their laughter roared like the sea in his ears. He wanted it louder and louder; he wanted them to drown out the war with their laughter. If the could should loud enough, they might bring the world back to its senses; they might laugh loud enough to raise the dead.”

“I suppose I was lucky enough to be educated at a time when teachers still thought children could handle knowledge. They trusted us. Then there came a time when they decided that because not every kid in the class could understand or remember those things they wouldn't teach them anymore because it wasn't fair on the less good ones. So they withheld knowledge. Then I suppose the next lot of teachers didn't have the knowledge to withhold.”