Lots of people who complained about us receiving the MBE received theirs for heroism in the war - for killing people. We received ours for entertaining other people. I'd say we deserve ours more.

The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on.

But that was war. Just about all he could find in its favor was that it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents.

The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.

[Among the native people who became important to Boyden was Francis Pegahmagabow, a sniper credited with killing 378 Germans during the Great War, who is fictionalised as the sharpshooter Peggy in the novel. Pegahmagabow was the chief of the Parry Island reserve near where Boyden's mother now lives, and Boyden grew up with his grandchildren.] Francis looked at being a sniper as a job, neither with happiness nor sadness, ... To him it was like trapping and he was very good at it. But Canadians have completely forgotten him.

It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead.