“The answer to the question ‘How many children do you have?’ and the one to the question ‘How many children are you raising?’ are not identical in all cases: some men are not taking care of their own children, some are knowingly or unknowingly raising other men’s children, and some do not even know that they each have a child, another child, or other children.”
“Some people live a nothing life: the most important thing they ever do is die. Thank God for eccentrics! Take Gunner Octavian Neat. He would suddenly appear naked in a barrack room and say, “Does anybody know a good tailor?”, or “Gentlemen – I think there’s a thief in the battery.” He was the bane of the Regiment.”
“We human beings regard ourselves as (or compare ourselves to) animals only when it suits us.”
“...Roberts had joined the Royal Artillery in 1914 and since then had steadily risen to the rank of Gunner. Now the crunch: someone with a perverted sense of humour made him a Lance Bombardier. Roberts went insane with power. The war now consisted of two people, him and Hitler.”
“Taking good care of your husband or wife is the best way to thank their parent or parents for having taken good care of them.”
“Some women wear a miniskirt to reveal their thighs; some wear one to conceal their age.”
“Being HIV positive doesn’t necessarily mean that you are going to die before each and every person who is HIV negative.”
“Many a woman is in a relationship with or married to her man not because she loves him but only because she likes men like him.”
“Julesa: Are you a fool? Father will have you hung if he realises you ve escaped. Never: Everyone dies from something.”
“Had a cold hummus with pita bread, Under a delicious food, yellow or red. Might just have the appetite to cook Urgent dinner by hook or crook. So that s just a humus humor spread.”
“Everything that can be invented has been invented.”
“Not everyone who has killed themselves because they were HIV positive would have been killed by AIDS.”
“Whether it is big or small, the size of a poor man’s yard incessantly reminds him that he is poor.”
“We are sometimes hurt mostly or only not by what happened or is happening to us but by being felt sorry for.”
“Five hundred years ago the notoriously savvy Henry VIII discovered an elegant way to solve both his theological problems and his personal liquidity crisis —he dissolved the monasteries and nicked all their land.”
“So I figured I d leave the area, because I had no ties there anyway except for this girl I was seeing. We had conflicting attitudes: I really wasn t into meditating and she wasn t really into being alive. I told her I knew when I was going to die because my birth certificate has an expiration date.”
“I do prefer being alive. Most days.”