- The narrator returns from his first stay in Germany as a prisoner of war 23 years before the beginning of the novel.
- He's having a lot of trouble finding words, even now.
- Look, dirty limericks, right there in the fourth paragraph! This book is a trip.
- Once, the narrator was talking to filmmaker Harrison Starr; he tells the guy that yes, he's writing an anti-war book.
- Starr replies that he may as well write an anti-glacier book. After all, you've got about as much chance of stopping a war as you do of stopping a glacier.
- And even if you could stop war, there would still be death.