Ernest Ford

“We all have things we don’t talk about, Ernest thought. Even though, more often than not, those are the things that make us who we are.””

“You might be considered a gentleman in Italy,” Ford said magnanimously.””

“It was when we had come back from Canada and were living in the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs and Miss Stein and I were still good friends that Miss Stein made the remark about the lost generation. She had some ignition trouble with the old Model T Ford she then drove and the young man who worked in the garage and had served in the last year of the war had not been adept, or perhaps had not broken the priority of other vehicles, in repairing Miss Stein's Ford. Perhaps he had not realized the importance of Miss Stein's vehicle having the right of immediate repair. Anyway he had not been sérieux and had been corrected severely by the patron of the garage after Miss Stein's protest. The patron had said to him, 'You are all a génération perdue.' 'That's what you are. That's what you all are,' Miss Stein said. 'All of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation.' 'Really?' I said. 'You are,' she insisted. 'You have no respect for anything. You drink yourselves to death ...””