Mother Night

I think that tonight is the night I will hang Howard W. Campbell, Jr., for crimes against himself

Where’s evil? It’s that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It’s that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive.

The fact of his having put me under arrest in Germany was a fact of submicroscopic interest to me. He wasn’t my nemesis. My game was up long before O’Hare took me into custody. To me, O’Hare was simply one more gatherer of windblown trash in the tracks of war.

O’Hare had a far more exciting view of what we were to each other. When drunk, at any rate, he thought of himself as St. George and of me as the dragon.

the schoolteacher’s three children did not bat an eye.

Nor, I thought, would they ever.

Nor, I thought, would I.

Ever again.

You’d be good at public relations,” said Kraft.

“I certainly don’t have any powerful convictions to get in the way of a client’s message,” I said.

I admire form,” I said. “I admire things with a beginning, a middle, an end—and, whenever possible, a moral, too.

I doubt if there has ever been a society that has been without strong and young people eager to experiment with homicide, provided no very awful penalties are attached to it.

Resi put the noose in the ash can, where it was found the next morning by a garbage-man named Lazlo Szombathy. Szombathy actually hanged himself with it—but that is another story.

It’s all I’ve seen, all I’ve been through,” I said, “that makes it damn nearly impossible for me to say anything. I’ve lost the knack of making sense. I speak gibberish to the civilized world, and it replies in kind.

What were you doing in Hitler’s bunker—looking for your motorcycle and your best friend?