# Strange Meeting - Author: [Susan Hill](https://www.leafyquotes.com/susan-hill.md) - Quotes: 34 - Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/susan-hill/strange-meeting ## Quotes > Isn’t that why you read him to try and make some sense of all this? > He tried not to count over all the possible ways in which, after tomorrow, he was going to die. > I’m afraid of myself, of what I’m becoming. > Had seen that Barton has appalled by the sight of Feurvy, as he had not been by the sight of the dead pilot in the crashed plane. > He wanted to take the body … and dig a grave for him… for would that have been more purposeful, would he have done the first thing of vague since coming into this war? > He was almost beside himself in a rush of dread on Barton’s behalf. > There is no one that knows. Don’t go. > They seem like some dream country which we inhabited long ago. > This agony of feeling on behalf of someone else was entirely new to him. > That day it hit me, that I’d been feeling nothing. I’d become entirely callous. > But I have been ashamed of myself for getting so thoroughly hardened so quickly. > He thought I want to go back for there was nothing for him here. > He knew that when he left here, he would not be able to believe that it would all continue to exist. > the old familiar stumps of rotten black teeth. > Men could never be so stupid, John! After all this! > The letters were so full of formal expressions of love and sympathy. > I’ve been trying…give it a point and purpose when there are none. > We had better not start building castles in Spain. > He can’t wait to get his bayonet into someone, which I find very chilling, and more so because he is basically a nice chap. > But wasn’t Harris better off? For would he not have gone through terror after terror in the front line, only to meet a death less sudden, more painful, more clearly foreseen? > She was like the others. Understood nothing. > The War? I shouldn’t think that’s possible. > You can’t feel everyman’s death. > His initial excitement had gone long since. > John says one of the most difficult things is getting used to new faces, new faces. > It is the constant possibility of accident which erodes ones courage most of all. > John says he may have a head to lose but certainly not a heart. > Then he thought that he could hear the thudding of the guns. But there were so many noises now, imagined or remembered. > There will never be another war. > Oh it was like meeting ghosts. > He thought, we need him, he has something that none of us have. > …pieces of a past belonging to some stranger. > We can imagine it thats all. > We are drones not fighting men.