"I was just thinking that it would be nice if, for once in a while, life made things easier,” I told him, feeling annoyed. “Why does life have to throw impossible tasks at us all the time for crying out loud?” At hearing my debate, Luna huffed.“Because life’s a bitch,” she growled under her breath, sulking. “That’s why."

"I appear at times merry and in good heart, talk, too, before others quite reasonably, and it looks as if I felt, too, God knows how well within my skin. Yet the soul maintains its deathly sleep and the heart bleeds from a thousand wounds."

"Are you sorry? Do you wish you could do it all again and go off and write novels instead of being a teacher?No. You can’t trade what is for what might have been."

"The world is full of countries that have only come into existence in the last couple of hundred years, or even in the last few decades, while changes to borders are happening every day."

"In trench warfare five things are important: firewood, food, tobacco, candles, and the enemy. In winter on the Zaragoza front they were important in that order, with the enemy a bad last."

"The popular view that a child forgets easily is not an accurate one. Many people go right through life in the grip of an idea which has been impressed on them in very tender years."