Kropp on the other hand is a thinker. He proposes that a declaration of war should be a kind of popular festival with entrance-tickets and bands, like a bull fight. Then in the arena the ministers and generals of the two countries, dressed in bathing-drawers and armed with clubs, can have it out on themselves. Whoever survives the country wins. That would be much simpler and more than just this arrangement, where the wrong people do the fighting.

The art of living. Isn't that a funny expression?

In the eleven months preceding the outbreak of World War II, 211 treaties of peace were signed. Were these treaties of peace written on paper, or were they written on the hearts of men? And we must ask ourselves as we hear of treaties being written today, whether the treaties of the UN are written with the full cognizance of the fact that those who sign them are responsible before God?

Everything changed, and eleven months later, here I was in the middle of the night with a gungho major, playing secret agent, hoping some Frenchie didn't put a bullet in my skull before I gave the Germans and Italians their chance.

For the commission to do a great building, I would have sold my soul like Faust. Now I had found my Mephistopheles. He seemed no less engaging than Goethe's.

Hope, belief, and despair are not simply moods. They change our physical performance. They alter how quickly we react, how hard we fight, how quick we are to give up.- Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad.

My book 'Bamboo Walls' is forever because the Djojobojo Prophecy is timeless!

The whole world had changed. Only the fairy tales remained the same.

I am German, yes, but I am not a Nazi. There is a difference, and one day I hope you understand that.

There are some things you never say good-bye to.