This is all that matters.
“The assignment was to take the hill. There were four of us. Five if you count the vicente, but he had lost his hand when a grenade went off and couldn’t fight as he could when I first met him. And he was young and brave and the hill was soggy from days of rain and it sloped down toward a road and there were many German soldiers on the road and the idea was to aim for the first group and if our aim was true we could delay them.”
“Were you scared?”
“Of what?”
“Getting killed.”
“You’ll never write well if you fear dying. Do you?”
“Yeah, I do. I’d say it’s probably… may be my greatest fear actually.”
“Well it’s something all men before you have done, all men will do.”
“I know, I know.”
“Have you ever made love to a truly great woman?”
“Actually my fiancé is pretty sexy.”
“And when you make love to her you feel true and beautiful passion and you, for at least that moment, lose your fear of death?”
“No. That doesn’t happen.”
“I believe that love that is true and real creates a respite from death. All cowardice comes from not loving or not loving well which is the same thing and when the man who is brave and true looks death squarely in the face, like some rhino hunters I know or Belmonte who is truly brave, it is because they love with sufficient passion to push death out of their minds until it returns as it does to all men and then you must make really good love again. Think about it.”
