Katczinsky says it is all to do with education - it softens the brain.

I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another.

Everyone saves someone at least once. Just as he kills someone at least once. Even though he may not know it.

That is the remarkable thing about drinking: it brings people together so quickly, but between night and morning it sets an interval again of years.

We have our dreams because without them we could not bear the truth.

We are little flames poorly sheltered by frail walls against the storm of dissolution and madness, in which we flicker and sometimes almost go out…we creep in upon ourselves and with big eyes stare into the night…and thus we wait for morning.

-Why does a man live? -In order to think about it.