## Metadata - Author: [[William Boyd]] - Full Title: Waiting for Sunrise - Category: #books ## Highlights - When he had thrown that Mills no.5 bomb into the sap beneath the ruined tomb it was the final moment in the history of travel of that small piece of ordnance–a history that stretched back through space and time like a ghoulish, spreading wake. From ore mined in Canada, shipped to Britain, smelted, moulded, turned, filled and packed in a box, designated as ‘stores to be transported from the United Kingdom to France’. ([Location 4862](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005Z0PY4W&location=4862)) - He saw all the monstrous, gargantuan effort of the war as a winter bonfire–yes, but in reverse. As if the drifting, ground-hugging pall of smoke were converging–arrowing in–on one point, to feed the small, angry conflagration of the fire. All those miles of broad, dense, drifting smoke narrowing, focussing on the little crackling flickering flames burning vivid orange amongst the fallen leaves and the dead branches. ([Location 4876](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005Z0PY4W&location=4876)) - What was the Viennese connection in the Andromeda affair, he wondered dozily. If Hettie hadn’t accused him of rape, if he hadn’t called on Munro at the embassy, if he hadn’t artfully engineered his own escape, then his current life would be entirely different. But what was the point of that? The view backward showed you all the twists and turns your life had taken, all the contingencies and chances, the random elements of good luck and bad luck that made up one person’s existence. Still, questions buzzed around his brain all night as he tossed and fidgeted, punched and turned his pillows, opened and closed the windows of his room, waiting for sunrise. ([Location 5052](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005Z0PY4W&location=5052)) - As I write this, a man sitting opposite me is reading a novel and, from time to time, picking his nose, examining what he has mined from his nasal cavities and popping the sweetmeat into his mouth. Amazing the secrets we reveal about ourselves when we think we’re not being observed. Amazing the secrets we can reveal when we know we are. ([Location 5702](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005Z0PY4W&location=5702)) - The hushed tinkle of silverware on crockery and a low murmur of discreet conversation greeted him. It was like entering a library, Lysander felt, with a library’s implicit prohibitions against unnecessary noise–quiet footsteps, please, coughs and sneezes to be muffled, no laughter at all. ([Location 5736](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005Z0PY4W&location=5736)) - Maybe this is what life is like–we try to see clearly but what we see is never clear and is never going to be. The more we strive the murkier it becomes. All we are left with are approximations, nuances, multitudes of plausible explanations. Take your pick. I feel, after what I have gone through, that I understand a little of our modern world now, as it exists today. And perhaps I’ve been offered a glimpse into its future. I was provided with the chance to see the mighty industrial technologies of the twentieth-century war machine both at its massive, bureaucratic source and at its narrow, vulnerable human target. And yet, for all the privileged insight and precious knowledge that I gleaned, I felt that the more I seemed to know, then the more clarity and certainty dimmed and faded away. As we advance into the future the paradox will become clearer–clear and black, blackly clear. The more we know the less we know. Funnily enough, I can live with that idea quite happily. If this is our modern world I feel a very modern man. ([Location 6608](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005Z0PY4W&location=6608))