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

Give 'em all the same grub and all the same pay/And the war would be over and done in a day." - All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 3

To forget is the secret of eternal youth. One grows old only through memory. There's much too little forgetting.

You may turn into an archangel, a fool, or a criminal—no one will see it. But when a button is missing—everyone sees that.

At school nobody ever taught us how to light a cigarette in a storm of rain, nor how a fire could be made with wet wood-nor that it is best to stick a bayonet in the belly because there it doesn't get jammed, as it does in the ribs.

To me the front is a mysterious whirlpool. Though I am in still water far away from its centre, I feel the whirl of the vortex sucking me slowly, irresistibly, inescapably into itself.

Trenches, hospitals, the common grave--there are no other possibilities.