On The Steps Is A Machine-gun Ready

We Have Our Dreams Because Without Them We Could Not Bear The Truth.

I Want That Quiet Rapture Again. I Want To Feel The Same Powerful, Nameless Urge That I Used To Feel When I Turned To My Books. The Breath Of Desire That Then Arose From The Coloured Backs Of The Books, Shall Fill Me Again, Melt The Heavy, Dead Lump Of Lead That Lies Somewhere In Me And Waken Again The Impatience Of The Future, The Quick Joy In The World Of Thought, It Shall Bring Back Again The Lost Eagerness Of My Youth. I Sit And Wait.

The Soldier Is On Friendlier Terms Than Other Men With His Stomach And Intestines. Three-quarters Of His Vocabulary Is Derived From These Regions, And They Give An Intimate Flavour To Expressions Of His Greatest Joy As Well As Of His Deepest Indignation. It Is Impossible To Express Oneself In Any Other Way So Clearly And Pithily. Our Families And Our Teachers Will Be Shocked When We Go Home, But Here It Is The Universal Language.

Give 'em All The Same Grub And All The Same Pay/and The War Would Be Over And Done In A Day." - All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 3

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.