Paul Fussell

“The more violent the body contact of the sports you watch, the lower the class.”

“I find nothing more depressing than optimism.”

“If I didn't have writing, I'd be running down the street hurling grenades in people's faces.”

“Americans are the only people in the world known to me whose status anxiety prompts them to advertise their college and university affiliations in the rear window of their automobiles.”

“The implicit optimism of the [field service post card] is worth noting—the way it offers no provision for transmitting news like “I have lost my left leg” or “I have been admitted into hospital wounded and do not expect to recover.” Because it provided no way of saying “I am going up the line again,” its users had to improvise. Wilfred Owen had an understanding with his mother that when he used a double line to cross out “I am being sent down to the base,” he meant he was at the front again. Close to brilliant is the way the post card allows one to admit to no state of health between being “quite” well, on the one hand, and, on the other, being so sick that one is in hospital.”

“The past, which as always did not know the future, acted in ways that ask tobe imagined before they are condemned. Or even simplified.”

“The worst thing about war was the sitting around and wondering what you were doing morally.”

“Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected. Every war constitutes an irony of situation because its means are so melodramatically disproportionate to its presumed ends.”