Quotes from Martha Gellhorn

Furthermore, they were constantly informed by all the camp authorities that they had been abandoned by the world: they were beggars and lucky to receive the daily soup of starvation.

In the last camp they all ate grass, until the authorities forbade them to pull it up. They were accustomed to having the fruits of their little communal gardens stolen by the guards, after they had done all the work; but at the last camp everything was stolen.

And though various organizations in America and England collected money and sent food parcels to these refugees, nothing was ever received by the Spanish.

The road passed through a curtain of pine forest and came out on a flat, rolling snow field. In this field the sprawled or bunched bodies of Germans lay thick, like some dark shapeless vegetable.

What the trees can do handsomely-greening and flowering, fading and then the falling of leaves-human beings cannot do with dignity, let alone without pain.

Journalism at its best and most effective is education. Apparently people would not learn for themselves, nor from others.

Freedom' is the most expensive possession there is; it has to be paid for with loneliness.

Nothing is better for self-esteem than survival.

It would be a bitter cosmic joke if we destroy ourselves due to atrophy of the imagination.

And though various organizations in America and England collected money and sent food parcels to these refugees, nothing was ever received by the Spanish.

After the desperate years of their own war, after six years of repression inside Spain and six years of horror in exile, these people remain intact in spirit. They are armed with a transcendent faith they have never won, and yet they have never accepted defeat.

Why do people talk of the horrors of old age? It's great. I feel like a fine old car with the parts gradually wearing out, but I'm not complaining ... Those who find growing old terrible are people who haven't done what they wanted with their lives.

I know enough to know that no woman should ever marry a man who hated his mother.

Nothing is better for self-esteem than survival.

A broken heart is such a shabby thing, like poverty and failure and the incurable diseases which are also deforming. I hate it and am ashamed of it, and I must somehow repair this heart and put it back into its normal condition, as a tough somewhat scarred but operating organ.

The only way I can pay back for what fate and society have handed me is to try, in minor totally useless ways, to make an angry sound against injustice.

I tell you loneliness is the thing to master. Courage and fear, love, death are only parts of it and can easily be ruled afterwards. If I make myself master my own loneliness there will be peace or safety: and perhaps these are the same.

What the trees can do handsomely-greening and flowering, fading and then the falling of leaves-human beings cannot do with dignity, let alone without pain.

Life is not long at all, never long enough, but days are very long indeed.

War happens to people, one by one. That is really all I have to say and it seems to me I have been saying it forever. Unless they are immediate victims, the majority of mankind behaves as if war was an act of God which could not be prevented; or they behave as if war elsewhere was none of their business. It would be a bitter cosmic joke if we destroy ourselves due to atrophy of the imagination.

I wait every year for summer, and it is usually good, but it is never as good as that summer I am always waiting for.

And this urge to run away from what I love is a sort of sadism I no longer pretend to understand.

the ends never justify the means because IT never ends.

Gradually I came to realize that people will more readily swallow lies than truth, as if the taste of lies was homey, appetizing: a habit.