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

we have so much to say, and we shall never say it.

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.

The coffin, it shall protect me, though Death himself lies in it

Life did not intend to make us perfect. Whoever is perfect belongs in a museum.

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

I want that quiet rapture again. I want to feel the same powerful, nameless urge that I used to feel when I turned to my books. The breath of desire that then arose from the coloured backs of the books, shall fill me again, melt the heavy, dead lump of lead that lies somewhere in me and waken again the impatience of the future, the quick joy in the world of thought, it shall bring back again the lost eagerness of my youth. I sit and wait.