The Boy I Love Quotes

“The memory of these men is all the more poignant for the fact that they lived and died defending a country that, for the most part, despised them.”
― William Hussey, The Boy I Love

“That is the irony of this war — love between fighting men is something to be encouraged and applauded. Just as long as it is the right kind of love.”
― William Hussey, The Boy I Love

“I feel exhausted and energised, happy and tearful, full of hope and despair. Contradictions that only make sense when you know you’re in love. I once thought that we’d never have this time together. That before we could consummate whatever feeling there was between us we would be consumed. That this ever-hungry war must grip us in its jaws and devour us first. Now I’m both grateful and sorry for the night we’ve just shared. We’ve expressed our love in a dozen ways but love, like war, is never satisfied and I want more. More nights with him whispering my name, more dawns wrapped in each other’s arms. But the guns and the mud and the slaughter await us, patient as the grave.”
― William Hussey, The Boy I Love

“That’s the world I am fighting to save. Because have no doubt, when the guns fall silent and the dust settles over this devastated continent, it’ll be old men like the colonel who survive and remain in charge.”
― William Hussey, The Boy I Love

“And there is another thought that howls at me after that interview with the colonel. Commanders like Gallagher would happily throw all his men into the meatgrinder if it meant eventual victory. All except those of us he considers degenerates. Our lives aren’t worthy of annihilation in the wastes of No Man’s Land. Such a death is too honourable. For us, if we are discovered, court-martial, disgrace and imprisonment with hard labour is a lenient punishment. For Gallagher, we deserve no better than an executioner’s bullet.”
― William Hussey, The Boy I Love

“That didn’t sound like me. At least, it didn’t sound like the person I used to be. Sounded more like my father, if anything. A thought that makes me sick to my stomach. But this is what war does to you: hollows you out, makes you brutal, builds up walls inside you.”
― William Hussey, The Boy I Love

“But his war and mine were very different. How do you begin to explain to a soldier who fought with sword and musket what it is like to see a single machine gun cut down fifty men in the space between heartbeats? I might as well be speaking another language.”
― William Hussey, The Boy I Love

“A rich childhood, you might say. Except I'd never had a parent who loved me the way Danny's mother had clearly loved him. A fearless love that would defy any challenge, any authority, any commandment.”
― William Hussey, The Boy I Love