No Man's Land Quotes

“You can't win because of the guns," said Adam with a sigh. "Machine guns, mortars, field guns, howitzers: it doesn't matter how much courage soldiers have, how much will; flesh and blood can't pass through bullets and shells, or at least not in sufficient numbers to have any effect. The guns win in the end and they always will. Not us, not the Germans - the guns.”
― Simon Tolkien, No Man's Land

“And he needed to be able to look at himself in the mirror without having to turn away - he couldn't bear to be less than he hoped he was. It was a virtue and a fault that he would carry with him all his life.”
― Simon Tolkien, No Man's Land

“...his endearment fell on deaf ears like a stone dropping into an empty well.”
― Simon Tolkien, No Man's Land

“Because it was the ugliness that drew him to her: it told him that she had suffered and been ruined by the war just like him. For her the damage was visible, whereas for him it was hidden beneath the surface. But they were still the same—casualties, walking wounded, carrying on without hope of recovery, separated from the rest of the population by an experience that they could neither share nor explain.”
― Simon Tolkien, No Man's Land

“He needed to stop being angry, he realized. It wasn’t Sir John’s fault that he didn’t understand the war—it was impossible to understand it unless you went there and saw it and heard it and smelt it for yourself, and even that might not be enough if you were just a visitor, a tourist able to return home when you felt you’d had enough…”
― Simon Tolkien, No Man's Land

“It seemed sometimes as if he was two different people, one a product of his background and class and the other the person he might have been if he had been born outside of their confines.”
― Simon Tolkien, No Man's Land