Suddenly I Become Filled With A Consuming

Little By Little Things Began To Assume A New Aspect. The Sense Of Insecurity Vanished, Words Came Of Themselves, I Was No Longer So Painfully Conscious Of Everything I Said. I Drank On And Felt The Great Soft Wave Approach And Embrace Me; The Dark Hour Began To Fill With Pictures And Stealthily The Noiseless Procession Of Dreams Appeared Again Superimposed On The Dreary, Grey Landscape Of Existence.

Monotonously The Lorries Sway, Monotonously Come The Calls, Monotonously Falls The Rain. It Falls On Our Heads And On The Heads Of The Dead Up The Line, On The Body Of The Little Recruit With The Wound That Is So Much Too Big For His Hip; It Falls On Kemmerich's Grave; It Falls In Our Hearts.

Modesty And Conscientiousness Receive Their Reward Only In Novels. In Life They Are Exploited And Then Shoved Aside.

No Matter How Improbable An Assertion Is, If It Is Made With Enough Assurance It Has An Affect.

We Were Eighteen And Had Begun To Love Life And The World; And We Had To Shoot It To Pieces.