May you be spared such thirst, let alone any marching army.

See the bestellar review of this astonishing, compassionate novel.

‘God, I’m thirsty,’ Jake said. ‘I feel like the whole Russian army marched through my mouth in its stocking feet.’

Source: Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2008 (1940)), p. 51