That night at the mess I sat next to the priest and he was disappointed and suddenly hurt that I had not gone to the Abruzzi. I myself felt as badly as he did and could not understand why I had not gone. It was what I had wanted to do…I had drunk much wine and afterwards coffee and Strega and I explained, winefully, how we did not do the things we wanted to do; we never did such things. We two were talking while the others argued. …I had gone to no place where the roads were frozen as hard as iron, where it was clear cold and dry and snow was dry and powdery and hare-tracks in the snow and the peasants took off their hats to you and called you Lord and there was good hunting. I had one to no such place but to the smoke of cafes and nights where the room whirled and you needed to look at the wall to make it stop, nights in bed, drunk, when you knew that that was all there was, and the strange excitement of waking and not knowing who it was with you, and the world all unreal in the dark and so exciting that you must resume again unknowing and not caring in the night, sure that this was all and all and all and not caring. Suddenly to care very much and to sleep and to wake with it sometimes morning and all that had been there gone and everything sharp and hard and clear …I tried to tell about the night and the difference between night and day and how the night was better unless the day was very clean and cold and I could not tell it; as I cannot tell it now. But if you have it you know. He had not had it but he understood that I had really wanted to go to the Abruzzi but had not gone and we were still friends, with many tastes alike, but with the difference between us, He had always known what I did not know and what, when I leaned it, I was always able to forget.  But I did not know that then, although I leaned it later.

Earnest Hemmingway ‘A Farewell to Arms’