#Quotes from Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong

Jeane had once said that men were not like women, that once they had possessed a woman it was as thought nothing had happened and they just wanted to move on to another. [64]

The difference between living and dying was not one of quality, only of time. [67]

Constant shelling is a cure for impure thoughts. I never think of women. They belong to a different existence. [146]

Men are such timid creatures, really, You have to be gentle with them. Make them feel safe. To begin with, anyway. [235]

They boasted in a mocking way of what they had seen and done; but in their sad faces wrapped in rags he saw the burden of their unwanted knowledge. [270]

It's better to have a malign providence than an indifferent one. [278]

I heard a voice. There was something beyond me. All my life I had lived on the presumption that there was no existence beyond...flesh, the moment of being alive...then nothing. I had searched in superstition... Rats. But there was nothing. Then I heard the sound of my own life leaving me. Then I believed in the wisdom of what other men had found before me...I saw that those simple things might be true...I never wanted to believe in them because it was better to fight my own battle. You can believe in something without compromising the burden of your own existence. [284]

It's true that loyalty can't be partial, it must be complete. [308]

I have tried to resist the slide into this unreal world, but I lack the strength. I am tired. Now I am tired in my soul. [403]

Which human being out of all those you have met would you choose to hold your hand, to hold close to you in the beginning of eternity? [432]

Where there is real love between people, as there was between all of us, then the details don't matter. Love is more important than the flesh-and-blood facts of who gave birth to whom. [473]