A Soldier of the Great War

by Mark Helprin

I suppose a nightmare is having to play by rules that make no sense, for a purpose that is entirely alien, without control of either one’s fate or even one’s actions.

“And how does God speak to you?” “In the language of everything that is beautiful.”

It’s the overwhelming combination of all that I’ve seen, felt, and cannot explain, that has stayed with me and refused to depart, that drives me again and again to a faith of which I am not sure, that is alluring because it will not stoop to be defined by so inadequate a creature as man.

“I’m not detached. I’m only certain that I’ve touched upon the truth.”

To see the beauty of the world is to put your hands on lines that run uninterrupted through life and through death. Touching them is an act of hope, for perhaps someone on the other side, if there is another side, is touching them, too.”

The lack of an aesthetic empowers the extremes,

When you go to bed alone and arise alone, the sound of even a teaspoon in a china cup, very early in the morning, can be as graceless as the sound of a freight train slithering diagonally through a railyard, deliberately slow, scraping every switch.

the intellect is of no use unless it’s disciplined by the mortification of the flesh, so that it may serve the soul. That’s all. The intellect thinks. The body dances. And the spirit sings. A song, a simple song. When love and memory are overwhelming, and the soul, though crushed, takes flight, it does so in a simple song.”

“You may not even have thought of red as anything more than just a color for decoration, but red is a most precious sign when you’re at the bedside of someone you’ve just lost, for they haven’t a trace of it. And red is the color of real love between a man and a woman. Its absence from the flesh in the act of love is far more profound than any protestation or vow. Indeed, in a marriage ceremony, red on a bride’s cheek is her real vow, the rest useless and profane.

You undoubtedly long for the pain of the world with the same intensity that you desire to love a woman.”