Everyone saves someone at least once. Just as he kills someone at least once. Even though he may not know it.

Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear. The life that has borne me through these years is still in my hands and my eyes. Whether I have subdued it, I know not. But so long as it is there it will seek its own way out, heedless of the will that is within me." -All Quiet On The Western Front, Chapter 12

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

-Why does a man live? -In order to think about it.

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

He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front. He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come.

Katczinsky says it is all to do with education - it softens the brain.