Alice Winn > Quotes

“You’re not afraid of dying, Henry. You’re just opposed to killing. That isn’t cowardice.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“Our bodies were used to stop bullets, thought Ellwood. He could think of nothing else.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“He recognised that bravery could only exist where there was fear, and so of all of them, only Gaunt was truly capable of heroism.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“England was filthy with ignorance, and the trenches were clean by comparison.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“In the hypermasculine atmosphere of war, they were not overly concerned with manliness.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“What I meant to say is this: You’ll write more poems. They are not lost. You are the poetry.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“Mostly the men talk about the mud and the rats and God. We have to censor the mud and the rats, but God is allowed to remain, which strikes me as ironic.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“I think you’re so frightened of losing your mind that you’re driving yourself insane,” said Ellwood.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“The Hague Convention sought to make war more humane. We had reached a point in history where we believed it was possible to make war humane.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“Will you write about me when I die, Elly?”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“I know you’re fine,” said Ellwood, smoke drifting out of his exquisite mouth as they stood on Fox’s Bridge. “But are you all right?”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“It seems awfully untoward to go about demanding people’s Christian names like a child or an American.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“Gaunt wished he could tell him he loved him, but they were in public, and it was illegal.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“He didn’t know what that meant. Pain was an unpredictable marker of damage.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“You’ll write more poems. They are not lost. You are the poetry.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“I do hope you’ll write to me, once you are at the front. Henry sends the most wooden little letters, and my imagination fills in the horror.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“(The French were always happy to provide diversions. This particular one took the form of five histrionic Frenchmen angrily accusing the Kommandant of insulting them by allowing French orderlies to work on a Catholic holiday that Gaunt later discovered they had invented. As the Kommandant defended himself, more and more incensed Frenchmen arrived, and the crowd grew increasingly volatile, until the bloodthirsty cries of “Liberté! Egalité! Fraternité!” and threats of camp-wide revolution could be heard even in the tunnelling basement.)”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“I’m sorry, people said, and then they had cleared their conscience, and Ellwood was left with the memories.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“But then my cricket bat went missing! There was villainy afoot.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“It was much easier to be brave for your friends than for yourself.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“And it was a magical thing, to love someone so much; it was a feeling so strange and slippery, like a sheath of fabric cut from the sky.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“Tired. A new word ought to be invented, if this was tired.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“His life can’t simply have stopped—surely it must have ended.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“It’s always worst when you’re almost free,” said Nicholson.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“What use was there in being so guarded that no one could get in, and nothing could get out?”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“Children delight in being frightened of storms. It exercises some need within them. The guns had much the same effect on us. It was like fireworks gone mad. It made me feel I was at the centre of the universe.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“One runs out of ways to say, “Your son died painlessly and was a credit to the Empire.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“it was painful to look at something so lovely without knowing if he would be allowed to keep it.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“I work twelve-hour days in a hospital full of men in varying states of rot and decay, and the War does not end, yet I don’t know how it can possibly go on.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“Ellwood smiled, although the words stabbed a little. Gaunt was the only person around whom Ellwood allowed himself to talk about things like souls.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam