The Wars Quotes

“I doubt we will ever be forgiven. All I hope is – they'll remember we were human beings”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“He said that in a way being loved is like being told you never have to die.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“People can only be found in what they do.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“Everyone who’s born has come from the sea. Your mother’s womb is just a sea in small. And birds come of seas on eggs. Horses lie in the sea before they’re born. The placenta is the sea. Your blood is the sea continued in your veins. We are the ocean — walking on the land.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“I still maintain that an ordinary human being has the right to be horrified by a mangled body seen on an afternoon walk.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“Rodwell wandered into No Man's Land and put a bullet through his ears. On Sunday, Robert sat on his bed in the old hotel at Bailleul and read what Rodwell had written.

To my daughter, Laurine;
Love your mother.
Make your prayers against despair.
I am alive in everything I touch. Touch these pages and you have me in your fingertips. We survive in one another. Everything lives forever. Believe it. Nothing dies.
I am your father always.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“You will live when you live. No one else can ever live your life and no one else will ever know what you know...”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“Think of any great man or woman. How can you separate them from the years in which they lived? You can't. Their greatness lies in their response to that moment.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“Nothing so completely verifies our perception of a thing as our killing of it.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“...no one belongs to anyone. We're all cut off at birth with a knife and left at the mercy of strangers. You hear that? Strangers. I know what you want to do. I know you're going to go away to be a soldier. Well-you can go to hell. I'm not responsible. I'm just another stranger. Birth I can give you-but life I cannot. I can't keep anyone alive. Not anymore.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“All of this happened a long time ago. But not so long ago that everyone who played a part in it is dead. Some can still be met in dark old rooms with nurses in attendance.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“The spaces between the perceiver and the thing perceived can [...] be closed with a shout of recognition.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“The mud. There are no good similes. Mud must be a Flemish word. Mud was invented here. Mudland must have been its name. The ground is the colour of steel. Over most of the plain there isn't a trace of topsoil; only sand and clay. The Belgians call them 'clyttes', these fields, and the further you go towards the sea, the worse the clyttes become. In them, the water is reached by the plough at an average depth of eighteen inches. When it rains (which is almost constantly from early September through to March, except when it snows) the water rises at you out of the ground. It rises from your footprints-and an army marching over a field can cause a flood. In 1916, it was said that you 'waded to the front'. Men and horses sank from sight. They drowned in mud. Their graves, it seemed, just dug themselves and pulled them down.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“1915. The year itself looks sepia and soiled-muddied like its pictures. In the snapshots everyone at first seems timid-lost-irresolute. Boys and men squinting at the camera.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“Mrs Ross adjusted her veil but did not put the flask away... 'Why is this happening to us, Davenport? What does it mean - to kill your children? Kill them and then go in there and sing about it! What does that mean?' She wept-but angrily.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“He took his aim. His arm wavered. His eyes burned with sweat. Why didn't someone come and jump on his back and make him stop?

He fired.

A chair fell over in his mind.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“in a way being loved is like being told you never have to die.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“Here was an unknown quantity-a child in breeches with a blue scarf wound around his neck whose job it was to get them out and back alive. This...was the greatest terror of war: what you didn't know of the men who told you what to do-where to go and when. What if they were mad-or stupid? What if their fear was greater than yours? Or what if they were brave and crazy-wanting and demanding bravery from you? He looked away. He thought of being born-and trusting your parents. Maybe that was the same. Your parents could be crazy too. Or stupid. Still-he'd rather his father was with him-telling him what to do. Then he smiled. He knew that his father would take one look at the crater and tell him not to go.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“What you people who weren't yet born can never know is what it meant to sleep in cities under silent falls of snow when all night long the only sounds you heard were dogs that parked at trains that passed so far away they took a short cut through your dreams and no one even woke. It was the war that changed that. It was. After the Great War for Civilization - sleep was different everywhere...”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“You begin to arrange your research in bundles - letters - photos - telegrams. This is that last thing you see before you put on your overcoat:
Robert and Rowena with Meg: Rowena seated astride the pony – Robert holding her in place. On the back is written: 'Look! You can see our breath!' And you can.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“So far, you have read of the deaths of 557,017 people – one of whom was killed by a streetcar, one of whom died of bronchitis and one of whom died in a barn with her rabbits.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“The occupants of memory have to be protected from strangers.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“Houses, trees and fields of flax once flourished here. Summers had been blue with flowers. Now it was a shallow sea of stinking grey from end to end. And this is where you fought the war.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“Master Stuart made his letters into paper darts and launched them page by page from the roof of the house-watching them descend and fade into the green ravine below...Some he saved to trade at school for other artifacts of war sent home by other elder brothers like his own-but only the letters mailed from France were worthy of this exchange. They had to have the smell of fire.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“When Mrs Ross asked him what he was thinking of, he shrugged. But he was thinking of the time he'd climbed the steeple of a church when he was ten-and had seen, for the very first time, the world spread out around him like a gift.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“I guess you saw them all as beautiful because you couldn’t bear to see them broken.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“[...] waiting for the shot that would kill him. Everyone said you didn't hear that shot. They said if it got you it was silent. How the hell did anyone alive know that?”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“What you have to accept at the outset is this: many men have died like Robert Ross, obscured by violence. Lawrence was hurled against a wall—Scott entombed in ice and wind—Mallory blasted on the face of Everest. Lost. We're told Euripides was killed by dogs—and this is all we know. The flesh was torn and scattered—eaten. Ross was consumed by fire. These are like statements: 'pay attention!' People can only be found in what they do.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“I've never met—have you?—a truly sophisticated man. World-weary and discreet—of course. But never sophisticated.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars

“Go, he said; in peace. And sing with the whales.”
― Timothy Findley, The Wars