Erich Maria Remarque

That is the remarkable thing about drinking it brings people together so quickly but between night and morning it sets an interval again of years.

We developed a firm practical feeling of solidarity which grew on the battlefield into the best thing that the war produced comradeship in arms.

It's only terrible to have nothing to wait for.

Any non-commissioned officer is more of an enemy to a recruit, any schoolmaster to a pupil, then they are if they were free.

The crowd, still shouting, gives way before us. We plough our way through. Women hold their aprons over their faces and go stumbling away. A roar of fury goes up. A wounded man is being carried off.

Anyway the war is over so far as they are concerned. But to wait for dysentery is not much of a life either.

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.

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

A hospital alone shows what war is.

The later it gets the more disturbed the city becomes. I go with Albert through the streets. Men are standing in groups at every corner. Rumours are flying. It is said that the military have already fired on a procession of demonstrating workers.

They are more human and more brotherly towards one another, it seems to me, than we are. But perhaps that is merely because they feel themselves to be more unfortunate than us.

No soldier outlives a thousand chances.

On the steps is a machine-gun ready for action. The square is empty; only the streets that lead into it are jammed with people. It would be madness to go farther - the machine-gun is covering the square.

I am often on guard over the Russians. In the darkness one sees their forms move like stick storks, like great birds. They come close up to the wire fence and lean their faces against it. Their fingers hook round the mesh.

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.