I Am Young, I Am Twenty Years

We Came To Realise - First With Astonishment, Then Bitterness, And Finally With Indifference - That Intellect Apparently Wasn't The Most Important Thing...not Ideas, But The System; Not Freedom, But Drill. We Had Joined Up With Enthusiasm And With Good Will; But They Did Everything To Knock That Out Of Us.

We Have So Much To Say, And We Shall Never Say It.

The Miracle Has Passed Me By; It Has Touched But Not Changed Me; I Still Have The Same Name And I Know I Will Probably Bear It Until The End Of My Days; I Am No Phoenix; Resurrection Is Not For Me; I Have Tried To Fly But I Am Tumbling Like A Dazzled, Awkward Rooster Back To Earth, Back Behind The Barbed Wires.

We Were Eighteen And Had Begun To Love Life And The World; And We Had To Shoot It To Pieces. The First Bomb, The First Explosion, Burst In Our Hearts. We Are Cut Off From Activity, From Striving, From Progress. We Believe In Such Things No Longer, We Believe In The War." - All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 5

We Have Lost All Sense Of Other Considerations, Because They Are Artificial. Only The Facts Are Real And Important To Us. And Good Boots Are Hard To Come By." - All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 2