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.

Every little bean must be heard as well as seen!

It was a melancholy secret that reality can arouse desires but never satisfy them.

Do I walk? Have I feet still? I raise my eyes, I let them move round, and turn myself with them, one circle, one circle, and I stand in the midst. All is as usual. Only the Militiaman Stanislaus Katczinsky has died. Then I know nothing more.

Strange how complicated we can make things just to avoid showing what we feel!

We want to live at any price; so we cannot burden ourselves with feelings which, though they might be ornamental enough in peace-time, would be out of place here.

No matter how improbable an assertion is, if it is made with enough assurance it has an affect.