War & Peace Quote by Dennis Nilsen

The chill here comes from how domesticated the violence feels. Nilsen frames a dead or dying man not as a victim but as a guest who has finally stopped making demands on the world. “At peace in my armchair” is staged like a tender household snapshot, the kind of image you’d associate with care, not conquest. That’s the point: he’s laundering domination through the language of comfort.

“I remember wishing he could stay in peace like that forever” carries a narcotic romanticism, but it’s also a control fantasy. Forever is not grief talking; it’s possession. Peace becomes a euphemism for stillness, for the end of another person’s autonomy. The armchair matters because it’s a prop of ordinary life, a set piece of middle-class respectability. By placing the body there, he’s not only arranging the scene, he’s rewriting the moral script: the home as sanctuary, the killer as caretaker.

The line that gives away the engine is “easing his burden with my strength.” It’s a self-appointment as savior, the oldest alibi for cruelty. Strength isn’t offered; it’s imposed. The subtext is an appeal for understanding, even admiration: look how merciful I was, look how calm he looked, look how heavy it all felt for me. In the broader context of Nilsen’s crimes - loneliness, commodified intimacy, bodies treated as companions - the quote functions as narrative camouflage. It’s a confession shaped like a lullaby, designed to make the listener hesitate between revulsion and recognition, and that hesitation is part of the manipulation.