The room shall speak, it must catch me up and hold me, I want to feel that I belong here, I want to hearken and know when I go back to the front line that the war will sink down, be drowned utterly in the great home-coming tide, know that it will then be past for ever, and not gnaw us continually, that it will have none but an outward power over us...Nothing stirs; listless and wretched, like a condemned man, I sit there and the past withdraws itself. And at the same time I fear to importune it too much, because I do not know what might happen then. I am a soldier, I must cling to that.

The wisest were just the poor and simple people. They knew the war to be a misfortune, whereas those who were better off, and should have been able to see more clearly what the consequences would be, were beside themselves with joy.

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

No soldier outlives a thousand chances.

Come let me kiss you. Life was never so precious as today— when it meant so little.

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

I want to think and at the same time that's the last thing in the world I want to do.