I Think The Recent Cluster Of Wwii

I Was Astonished To Find That The Positions My Grandfather Had Defended Were Now Overgrown And Entangled With Trees And Thorns. I Suppose I Had Developed A Sense Of Reverence For The Locations He Described In His Memoirs And Letters - The Forts And The High Emplacements. I Had Expected Them To Have Been Preserved In Some Way.

I Think The Recent Cluster Of Wwii Novels Is So Good Because We Have Reached An Optimal Distance From The War. Just As A Lens Has Its Focal Length, The Novel Also Has Its Best Distance From The Action.

It's Extremely Hard For Athletes To Accept What's Happened To Them Sometimes. It's Hard To Be Beaten By A Small Margin, And I've Spoken With Athletes Who, For Years Afterward, Have Been Tormented By The Knowledge That, Had They Done Something Ever So Slightly Different, They Could Have Been One-ten-thousandth Of A Second Quicker.

Courage Is A Muscle That Develops Through Use. It's No Use Waiting For Some Inner Fire To Conveniently Become Apparent At The Moment Of Crisis - That's Cartoon Stuff.

Everyone Carries The Weight Of Wwii With Them In Their Recent Family History, And Yet It Is Rarely Spoken About Within Families, Because Veterans And Survivors Don't Tend To Talk.