38 quotes
Still, the more sardonic they became, the more he cared for them. Still he could not quite believe them, he could not comprehend the lengths to which they allowed themselves to be driven.
Birdsong (1993)
And a recent one [food parcel] addressed to Wilkinson, some weeks dead had been a cause of particular celebration.
Birdsong (1993)
He was surprised by his own brutality, he assumed that it was caused by fear.
Birdsong (1993)
It made him laugh, mad-eyed and bearded, like a hermit in his cave.
Birdsong (1993)
He could remember this compassion but he no longer felt it.
Birdsong (1993)
There was a perverse appeal in the thought he could complete what no enemy had managed.
Birdsong (1993)
Stephen was moved by the thought of his fellow countrymen fighting this foreign war.
Birdsong (1993)
For a moment he was baffled. It seemed to have no agricultural purpose, there was no planting or ploughing to be done. Then he realised, they were digging a mass grave.
Birdsong (1993)
We’ve all gone now. The whole of our little group.
Birdsong (1993)
Non-believers finding faith in fear.
Birdsong (1993)
Perhaps in some way he did not understand, that was what the two officers had been doing: perhaps all that talk about life-drawing was just a way of pretending everything was normal.
Birdsong (1993)
Stephen was appalled by the idea of being separated from the men he had fought with. He despised the war, but could not leave until he had seen it through until the end.
Birdsong (1993)
They mocked him for still being alive.
Birdsong (1993)
What had taken place beneath that placid irregular roof seemed to belong to a world as peculiar and abnormal as the one in which he now lived.
Birdsong (1993)
They were breaking free into the darkness of normality, with food and drink, the sound of women and the sight of men whose first thought would not be to kill them.
Birdsong (1993)
I don’t value my life enough.
Birdsong (1993)
He wanted to answer them with steel and explosives, with metal tearing into soft tissue and spinning on the bone. When the war was over there would be a place for contemplation, even generosity, but in the meantime he treasured his hatred as a means of saving his own life and those of his men.
Birdsong (1993)
There aren't many great passages written about food but I love one by George Millar, who worked for the SOE in the second world war and wrote a book called 'Horned Pigeon.' He had been on the run and hadn't eaten for a week, and his description of the cheese fondue he smells in the peasant kitchen of a house in eastern France is unbelievable.