Quotes from Guy Sajer

Only happy people have nightmares, from overeating. For those who live a nightmare reality, sleep is a black hole, lost in time, like death.

Then there was the war, and I married it because there was nothing else when I reached the age of falling in love.

War always reaches the depths of horror because of idiots who perpetuate terror from generation to generation under the pretext of vengeance.

A day came when I should have died, and after that nothing seemed very important. So I have stayed as I am, without regret, separated from the normal human condition.

The problems I had existed before I did, and I discovered them.

Only the victors have stories to tell. We, the vanquished, were all cowards and weaklings by then, whose memories, fears, and enthusiasms should not be remembered.

A day came when I should have died, and after than nothing seemed very important, so I stayed as I am, without regret separated from the normal human condition.

It is a mistake to use intense words without carefully weighing and measuring them, or they will have already been used when one needs them later.

As I remember his laugh, there was nothing mad about it, it was more like the laugh of someone who has been the victim of a practical joke, a farce in which he had believed until suddenly he realized his folly.

No time to spare: the expression assumed its full significance, as so many expressions do in wartime.

Only victors have stories to tell, we the vanquished were then thought of as cowards and weaklings whose memories and fears should not be remembered.

Men who have embraced one idea can live only by and for that idea. Beyond it, they have nothing but their memories.

Peace has brought me many pleasures, but nothing as powerful as that passion for survival in wartime, that faith in love, and that sense of absolutes. It often strikes me with horror that peace is really extremely monotonous. During the terrible moments of war one longs for peace with a passion that is painful to bear. But in peacetime one should never, even for an instant, long for war!

Human beings, rulers of the animal world, had created their own destruction. A process of natural selection, often very badly organized, periodically topples our crown.

And I can remember a tear running down my frozen cheek—a tear neither of pain nor of joy but of emotion created by intense experience.

The Russians-especially the Ukrainians-are very gay and hospitable, and ready to celebrate almost any occasion. I remember several pleasant gatherings at the homes of these enthusiastic people, during which everyone managed to forget the rivalries of the war. And I remember the girls, shouting with laughter when they had every reason to hate us-on another human scale altogether from the affected Parisian beauty, obsessed by her appearance and her cosmetics.

Men who have embraced one idea can live only by and for that idea. Beyond it, they have nothing but their memories.