“One day, I shall explode like an artillery shell and all my bits will be found on the writing table.”

“Despite a number of near misses, I came through the war unscathed. In Tunisia a shell hit my vehicle but without harm to me, and in Sicily an exploding mine blew up my vehicle, but I was thrown clear. On the Roer River in Germany, just as I got out of my Jeep and entered a company command post, a mortar shell struck my vehicle. In the Remagen bridgehead on the Rhine a shell demolished a latrine moments after I had departed. Somehow none of the enemy shells had my number.”

“Trusting that…we shall have a fine fall of snow…. I hope in sixteen or seventeen days to be able to present to your Excellency a noble train of artillery.”

“I shall not be satisfied unless I produce something which shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies.”

“The fatherland shall one day be like this: We're not all equal, but we're all brothers.”

“I shall keep my book on the table here, and read a little every morning as soon as I wake, for I know it will do me good, and help me through the day.”

“With all my ideas and follies I could one day found a corporate company for the propagation of beautiful but unreliable imaginings.”

“In the interests of research
I have walked on many battlefields
that once were liquid with pulped
men’s bodies and spangled with exploded
shells and splayed bone.
All of them have been green again
by the time I got there.
Each has inspired a few good quotes in its day.
Sad marble angels brood like hens
over the grassy nests where nothing hatches.”

“Writing is a bit like being a god”

“If I could predict what my day would exactly look like, I would feel a little bit dead.”