It struck me that his dialect was actually the nondialect of someone who has learned a new language perfectly but without the lazy shortcuts of someo… - Dan Simmons

I ached everywhere. It was hard to separate the dull agony of the shattered leg from the ache in my head and my back and my guts. My skull felt as if there were a ball of mercury in it that shifted ponderously long seconds after my head itself turned. The vertigo made me sick again, but I had nothing left to vomit. I hung on the tangle of branches and contemplated the glories of adventure.

While I was obsessed with my own misery, there were other things occurring in the human universe.

War does not call for judgment, I said, merely survival.