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“His steel helmet flew back over the rear wall and lodged in the wire, and brains and blood were spilled all over the front of my overcoat and on my arms as the officer sank down at my feet. He had been shot between the eyes with an explosive bullet that had torn his helmet away, breaking the strap under his chin. It was the first death I had witnessed and yet I found myself strangely calm”.

“They even want us to take a handful of money for our dog—but we draw the line there; let them offer what they will, the dog stays with us.”

“And sometimes too the shells would bring them back among us again—crumbling bones tossed up, scraps of uniforms, wet, decayed hands, already earthy”

“The scraping sound of belts being tightened, a clatter of rifles, the sickly smell of death suddenly rises up again out of the earth. And we had hoped at last to have escaped it for ever!”

“Our situation is altogether different. The ultra-familiar, ultra-celebrated image—of an agony, of ruin—is an unavoidable feature of our camera-mediated knowledge of war.”

“war is a man’s game—that the killing machine has a gender, and it is male.”

“This is Mr Isherwood . . . You can speak quite openly to him. He hates the Nazis as much as we do. Oh, yes! Mr Isherwood is a confirmed anti-fascist!”

“I have never seen her since. About a fortnight later, just when I was thinking I ought really to ring her up, I got a postcard from Paris: “Arrived here last night. Will write properly tomorrow. Heaps of love.” No letter followed. A month after this, another postcard arrived from Rome, giving no address: “Am writing in a day or two,” it said. That was six years ago.“

“As I turned from the window, she curled herself up delicately on the sofa like a cat, and, opening her bag, felt for a cigarette.”

How many seas and frontiers shall I have to cross to reach that distant day; how far shall I have to travel, on foot, on horseback, by car, push-bike, aeroplane, steamer, train, lift, moving-staircase, and tram? […] How many thousands of cigarettes shall I smoke? How many cups of tea shall I drink and how many glasses of beer? What an awful tasteless prospect! And yet — to have to die…

El hombre sirena

Matar a un perro

A la vera del brasero, muy bueno

Mahmú

“—Teresita, tu voz tiembla, está húmedo tu rostro, ¿lloras?
—No muñequita, hace frío… nieva… hay un eterno invierno dentro de mi corazón.
Mahmú afligida se esconde entre mis brazos; sus manecitas pequeñas, rellenas de algodón, resbalan suavemente por mi rostro, y me dice al oído con su voz entrecortada:
—Teresita, yo te quiero tanto; Teresita tengo ganas de rezar…”