Perhaps the inevitable tragedy of our complex civilization is that we must be specialists in our fields - and our fields have become increasingly difficult, so that communication is nearly impossible.
You cannot control what you love--you watch it driving recklessly towards the broken bridge, the torn-up track, the horror of seventy years ahead.
The Titanic hit the iceberg not because they could not see it coming but because they could not change direction.
It is in the nature of things that some people should be unlucky enough to get their heads chopped off.
In the West, it was believed that attitude and ambition saved you. In Africa, we had learned that no one was immune to capricious tragedy.
We all get damned in our lives, and there are ripple effects. One thing can determine a life, and it's hard to overcome that if the event is really traumatic. Your life is completely condemned by it.
These violent delights have violent ends.
We may escape misfortune for a while, but the evil day will come.
If you are going to make a book end badly, it must end badly from the beginning.
The idea that the curtain rises on what is often more or less a happy scene, and it will fall just a few hours later, and everyone will be dead or have gone mad... I find that kind of narrative very appealing.
Predicting the number of casualties is an impossibility.
of an impending military confrontation
For no fault of mine, I lost everything.
