The Ghost Road

I remember standing by the bar and thinking that words didn't mean anything anymore. Patriotusm honour courage vomit vomit vomit. Only the names meant anything. Mons, Loos, the Somme, Arras, Verdun, Ypres.
But now I look round this cellar with the candles burning on the tables and our linked shadows leaping on the walls, and I realise there's another group of words that still mean something. Little words that trip through sentences unregarded: us, them, we, they, here, there. These are the words of power, and long after we're gone, they'll lie about in the language, like the unexploded grenades in these fields, and any one of them'll take your hand off.

‘What do I think? I think what you're saying is basically a conspiracy theory, and like all conspiracy theories it's optimistic. What you're saying is, OK the war isn't fought for the reasons we're told, but it is being fought for a reason. It's not benefiting people it's supposed to be benefiting, but it is benefiting somebody. And I don't believe that, you see. I think things are actually much worse than you think because there isn't any justification left. It's become self-perpetuating system. Nobody benefits. Nobody's in control. Nobody knows how to stop.’