Vasily Grossman Quotes

War is death's feast.

In war, everyone has their chance to bleed.

Blue is the smoke of wrar, white the bones of men.

War is a generality, so are the inevitabilities of war, including death.

War was the ultimate chaos, a pounding, soul-destroying snarl, ending in blown-apart men lying unburied on the cold earth. There was nothing more cosmically chaotic than war.

It needs but one foe to breed a war, and those who have not swords can still die upon them.

War may make a fool of man, but it by no means degrades him; on the contrary, it tends to exalt him, and its net effects are much like those of motherhood on women.

My subject is war, and the pity of war.

When war begins, then hell openeth.

For the most part, everybody who fights in war fights to survive.

When you're in the battlefield, survival is all there is. Death is the only great emotion.

Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land, drawing no dividend from time's tomorrows.

In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.

There are only two ways to come back from the battlefield: With the head of an enemy or without your own.

And when the war is done and youth stone dead I'd toddle safely home and die—in bed.

In war, everything changes. You are very selective of what you do because everything you do can be the last thing you do in your life.

War is delightful for those who don't know it

This is what war does. Right here, in my hands. This is war.

War is life multiplied by some number that no one has ever heard of.

I love the infantry because they are the underdogs. They are the mud-rain-frost-and-wind boys. They have no comforts, and they even learn to live without the necessities. And in the end they are the guys that wars can't be won without.

War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.

In war it does not matter who is right, but who is left.