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All my life I've been aware of the Second World War humming in the background. I was born 10 years after it was finished, and without ever seeing it. It formed my generation and the world we lived in. I played Hurricanes and Spitfires in the playground, and war films still form the basis of all my moral philosophy. All the men I've ever got to my feet for or called sir had been in the war.
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A broadsheet obituarist once pointed out to me that veteran soldiers die by rank. First to go are the generals, admirals and air marshals, then the brigadiers, then a bit of a gap and the colonels and wing commanders and passed-over majors, then a steady trickle of captains and lieutenants. As they get older and rarer, so the soldiers are mythologised and grow ever more heroic, until finally drummer boys and under-age privates are venerated and laurelled with honours like ancient field marshals. There is something touching about that.
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Though the object of being a Great Power is to be able to fight a Great War, the only way of remaining a Great Power is not to fight one.
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I have little shame, no dignity – all in the name of a better cause.
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I've never before been so aware of the thousands of little good things, the thousands of things that go right every day.
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I liked the fact she understood how we all have little secret habits that seem normal enough to us, but which we know better than to mention out loud.
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A tiny remnant of a big thing is better than a whole little thing.
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There are bullfighters who do it just for the money-they are worthless [said Hemingway]. The only one who matters is the bullfighter who feels it, so that if he did it for nothing, he would do it just as well. Same holds true for damn near everyone.
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I had a nice read on the putt and I said to myself, 'This is for you, Jesus, ' and knocked it in.
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You said everything I needed to hear. I'm hooked now. You have me. What are you going to do with me?
