I like thinking about the fragility of the human flesh and our bodies - our decay and eventual death.

The adornment of the body is a human need. I don't see anything superficial about it unless your life becomes very materialistic.

Foolish defiance was his lifelong response to being ill.

But more often than not the missing face has been sucked into the engines of the Nazi death machine, like an unlucky lapwing hitting the propeller of a Lancaster bomber-nothing left but feathers blowing away in the aircraft's wake, as if those warm wings and beating heart had never existed.

We could smell the death and decay but we didn't actually see any (bodies) that first day, ... I think our third day out, everyone started seeing bodies and things like that.

The maggots told you something, but the decay of the bodies told you something else,