“Why is the word yes so brief?it should bethe longest,the hardest,so that you could not decide in an instant to say it,so that upon reflection you could stopin the middle of saying it.”

“Let us touch each otherwhile we still have hands,palms, forearms, elbows . . .Let us love each other for misery,torture each other, torment,disfigure, maim,to remember better,to part with less pain.”

“… if necessary, the books shall be divided as follows:you get the odd, I get the even pages;"the books" are understood to mean the ones we used to read aloudtogether, when we would interrupt our reading for a kiss,and would get back to the book after half an hour …”

“Basked in the sun,listened to birds,licked off raindrops,and only in flightthe leaf saw the treeand graspedwhat it had been.”

“I have brushed my teeth.This day and I are even.”

“I wish those people who write so glibly about this being a holy War, and the orators who talk so much about going on no matter how long the War lasts and what it may mean, could see a case--to say nothing of 10 cases--of mustard gas in its early stages--could see the poor things burnt and blistered all over with great mustard-coloured suppurating blisters, with blind eyes--sometimes temporally, sometimes permanently--all sticky and stuck together, and always fighting for breath, with voices a mere whisper, saying that their throats are closing and they know they will choke.”

“When a small child, I thought that success spelled happiness. I was wrong, happiness is like a butterfly which appears and delights us for one brief moment, but soon flits away. ”