Quotes by Kenneth Ward

“It was difficult to settle down to anything seriously, with all this flitting going on. Leaving the water-side, where rushes stood thick and tall in a stream that was becoming sluggish and low, he wandered country-wards, crossed a field or two of pasturage already looking dusty and parched, and thrust into the great sea of wheat, yellow, wavy, and murmurous, full of quiet motion and small whisperings. Here he often loved to wander, through the forest of stiff strong stalks that carried their own golden sky away over his head”

“Once in a while a kind nurse will call me that there is a bed available in the ward from the unfortunate death of a patient. They have cleared the bed and put a clean bed sheet on it.That was good enough for me. At last a bed to sleep in!Who cares if some dead patient has just occupied it?A bed was a bed. I have no qualms about sleeping in the bed, with a ghost of a patient who has just departed.””

“Everyone hates the Bulgarians. The UN pays countries cash to send soldiers on peacekeeping missions. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Bulgaria lost its subsidies and was broke. The Bulgarian government wanted money but didn’t want to send their best-trained troops. So, the story goes, they offered inmates in the prisons and psychiatric wards a deal: put on a uniform and go to Cambodia for six months, you’re free on return. All you have to do is stand guard and give away food, they said, the UN is not a real military. A battalion of criminal lunatics arrives in a lawless land. They get drunk as sailors, rape vulnerable Cambodian women, and crash their UN Land Cruisers with remarkable frequency.””