Top 50 Alice Winn Quotes (2026 Update)

1. “My dearest, darling Sidney,′ There was nothing else. Only dead white paper, blank and meaningless. A comma, followed by nothing. Death summed up by grammar.”

— Alice Winn

2. “I’m sorry. This is not what I intended to say. What I meant to say is this: You’ll write more poems. They are not lost. You are the poetry.”

— Alice Winn

3. “Gaunt was woven into everything he read, saw, wrote, did, dreamt. Every poem had been written about him, every song composed for him, and Ellwood could not scrape his mind clear of him no matter how he tried.”

— Alice Winn

4. “Gaunt paused in the doorway, a peculiar, fond smile on his lips. The same expression he used to get in school when Ellwood recited poetry to people who wished he wouldn’t; the same expression he had had on Divisional Rest in Loos, when Ellwood touched him more than was appropriate. It hadn’t ever changed. Gaunt had always looked at him like that, as if Ellwood’s flaws were qualities.”

— Alice Winn

5. “Death is a debt which every one of us must pay.”

— Alice Winn

6. “Ellwood smiled, and a sudden, dry bleakness spread over Gaunt’s heart as he thought of Hercules, and Hector, and all the heroes in myth who found happiness briefly, only for it not to be the end of the story.”

— Alice Winn

7. “We swarmed through Africa and America because we were better than they, of course we were, we were making war humane, and now it has broken down and they are dragged into hell with us. We have doomed the world with our advancements, with our democracy that is so much better than whatever they’ve thought of, with our technology that will so improve their lives, and now Algerian men must choke to death on their own melted insides in wet Belgian trenches and I –.”

— Alice Winn

8. “It was the Hell you’d feared in childhood, come to devour the children. It was treading over the corpses of your friends so that you might be killed yourself. It was the congealed evil of a century.”

— Alice Winn

9. “It was much easier to be brave for your friends than for yourself.”

— Alice Winn

10. “It was a bright blue day. The green leaves curled playfully into the sky, and daffodils burst out like exclamation points among the tombstones.”

— Alice Winn

11. “Only one thought can comfort, and that is that he died, not for war, but for peace.”

— Alice Winn

12. “It was dusk, on a Friday. The battered skeletons of trees tapered against the fresh starlight in No Man’s Land. The sky offered curious glimpses of beauty, from time to time. The men wrote about it in their letters, describing sunsets in painstaking detail to their families, as if there was nothing to see at the front but crimson clouds and dusted rays of golden light.”

— Alice Winn

13. “Gaunt did not hesitate before he signed, although he felt as if his name was being ripped from him. He was simmering with a restlessness like that he felt in the boxing ring; a determination to hurt and be hurt, an impulse towards disaster and destruction, and nothing else would have satisfied him.”

— Alice Winn

14. “Henry? Would you have kissed me, if it hadn’t been for the War?”

— Alice Winn

15. “It’s intimate.” Ellwood rubbed his nose. “Gaunt never called me that. I don’t think he felt close enough to me.”

— Alice Winn

16. “Their tenderness was hesitant and temporary, like a butterfly pausing on a child’s hand.”

— Alice Winn

17. “What a waste Sandys’ last days had been, thought Gaunt. Pathetically attempting to overcome a grief that would never have time to heal.”

— Alice Winn

18. “Ellwood held out an enthusiastic thumbs up.”

— Alice Winn

19. “I think you’re so frightened of losing your mind that you’re driving yourself insane,” said Ellwood.”

— Alice Winn

20. “And it was a magical thing, to love someone so much; it was a feeling so strange and slippery, like a sheath of fabric cut from the sky.”

— Alice Winn

21. “Our bodies were used to stop bullets, thought Ellwood. He could think of nothing else.”

— Alice Winn

22. “I’ve decided it doesn’t matter whether you love me back,” said Gaunt.”

— Alice Winn

23. “You’ll write more poems. They are not lost. You are the poetry.”

— Alice Winn

24. “Well, I know what he wanted. Same as all of us. Punting and lectures and drinks at the pub. 1912, forever.”

— Alice Winn

25. “The Hague Convention sought to make war more humane. We had reached a point in history where we believed it was possible to make war humane.”

— Alice Winn

26. “Only I do think it’s peculiar, how much more drawn people are to disaster than to beauty, how curious we are about the things that can be done to a body, don’t you find that interesting, Gaunt?”

— Alice Winn

27. “He recognised that bravery could only exist where there was fear, and so of all of them, only Gaunt was truly capable of heroism.”

— Alice Winn

28. “He missed England as if it were a person.”

— Alice Winn

29. “I do hope you’ll write to me, once you are at the front. Henry sends the most wooden little letters, and my imagination fills in the horror.”

— Alice Winn

30. “The land had lain for a century dead, but now it had awoken, demanding blood.”

— Alice Winn

31. “Will you write about me when I die, Elly?”

— Alice Winn

32. “It had been hopeless to love Ellwood because Ellwood did not love him back, and now it was hopeless even though he did.”

— Alice Winn

33. “England was filthy with ignorance, and the trenches were clean by comparison.”

— Alice Winn

34. “I’m sorry, people said, and then they had cleared their conscience, and Ellwood was left with the memories.”

— Alice Winn

35. “It was like watching the universe split in half.”

— Alice Winn

36. “I know you’re fine,” said Ellwood, smoke drifting out of his exquisite mouth as they stood on Fox’s Bridge. “But are you all right?”

— Alice Winn

37. “Gaunt let his head tilt so that it touched Ellwood’s on his shoulder. Elwood fell asleep, and Gaunt pretended to do the same, but he couldn’t think beyond the parts of them that were touching. If Ellwood were a girl, he might have held his hand, kissed his temple. He might have bought a ring and tied their lives together. But Ellwood was Ellwood, and Gaunt had to be satisfied with the weight of his head on his shoulder.”

— Alice Winn

38. “In the hypermasculine atmosphere of war, they were not overly concerned with manliness.”

— Alice Winn

39. “But then my cricket bat went missing! There was villainy afoot.”

— Alice Winn

40. “If something dreadful was being done to Gaunt, he wanted it done to him as well.”

— Alice Winn

41. “It seems awfully untoward to go about demanding people’s Christian names like a child or an American.”

— Alice Winn

42. “The loss of his eye had been what guaranteed his life, and so, to Gaunt, it was beautiful.”

— Alice Winn

43. “You’re not afraid of dying, Henry. You’re just opposed to killing. That isn’t cowardice.”

— Alice Winn

44. “What I meant to say is this: You’ll write more poems. They are not lost. You are the poetry.”

— Alice Winn

45. “The birds chattered merrily on the wet brown branches. Daffodils sunned out among the headstones. How alive it all seemed, and how gracious-to die in an era when your death bought you a brief moment at the centre of something. To be important, rather than one of millions.”

— Alice Winn

46. “Ellwood knew there was a quotation for this particular, painful speechlessness, but it did not come to him. All his words were gone. There was something surging gloriously in his chest, and he had no way to express it.”

— Alice Winn

47. “Roseveare had told him to wait a few days. The days had passed, and Ellwood knew what to do. There was a part of him that felt as if it had always been inevitable that he would be forced to wander the Continent, homelessly drifting, like his ancestors through the desert. It was inevitable, because of how badly he longed to be rooted to England. Because of how happy he was at Preshute, the world unfurling, magical and beckoning, before him. Of course he could not have it.”

— Alice Winn

48. “Gaunt wished he could tell him he loved him, but they were in public, and it was illegal.”

— Alice Winn

49. “He’ll be alright, said Hayes. He just needs a rest, that’s all. He’s tired. We’re all tired. Tired. A new word ought to be invented, if this was tired.”

— Alice Winn

50. “Mostly the men talk about the mud and the rats and God. We have to censor the mud and the rats, but God is allowed to remain, which strikes me as ironic.”

— Alice Winn