“The assignment was to take the hill. There were four of us, five if you counted Vicente, but he had lost his hand when a grenade went off and couldn’t fight as 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.

Have you ever made love to a truly great woman?…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… 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’s truly brave, it is because they love with sufficient passion to push death out of their minds. Until the return that it does to all men. And then you must make really good love again. Think about it.”

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From Woody Allen’s movie Midnight in Paris.