We are not youth any longer. We don’t want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces.

I did not want to think so much about her. I wanted to take her as an unexpected, delightful gift, that had come and would go again — nothing more. I meant not to give room to the thought that it could ever be more. I knew too well that all love has the desire for eternity and that therein lies its eternal torment. Nothing lasts. Nothing.

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

Through the years our business has been killing;-it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of lif eis limited to death.

They are more to me than life, these voices, they are more than motherliness and more than fear; they are the strongest, most comforting thing there is anywhere: they are the voices of my comrades.

Modesty and conscientiousness receive their reward only in novels. In life they are exploited and then shoved aside.

We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces.