An aggressive war is the great crime against everything good in the world. A defensive war, which must necessarily turn to aggressive at the earliest… - Ernest Hemingway

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.

Never think that war, no matter how necessary nor how justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead.

You see it's awfully hard to talk or write about your own stuff because if it is any good you yourself know about how good it is — but if you say so yourself you feel like a shit.

I did not say anything. I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stock yards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it.

I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know."