Erich Maria Remarque

Writer

1898-06-22 – 1970-09-25

Erich Maria Remarque was a German novelist best known for All Quiet on the Western Front. His antiwar writing made him one of the most influential literary voices on World War I.

Quotes by Erich Maria Remarque

We are little flames poorly sheltered by frail walls against the storm of dissolution and madness, in which we flicker and sometimes almost go out.
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The wisest were just the poor and simple people. They knew the war to be a misfortune, whereas those who were better off, and should have been able to see more clearly what the consequences would be, were beside themselves with joy.
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What's going on outside, Ravic?— "Nothing new, Kate. The world goes on eagerly preparing for suicide and at the same time deluding itself about what it's doing." "Will there be war?" "Everyone knows that there will be war. What one does not yet know is when. Everyone expects a miracle." Ravic smiled. "Never before have I seen so many politicians who believe in miracles as at present in France and England. And never so few as in Germany." She remained lying silent for a while. "To think that it should be possible" — she said then. "Yes" it seems so impossible that it will happen some day. Just because one considers it so impossible and doesn't protect oneself against it.
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We were never very demonstrative in our family; poor folk who toil and are full of cares are not so. It is not their way to protest what they already know. When my mother says to me dear boy, it means much more than when another uses it.
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Here I sit and there you are lying; we have so much to say, and we shall never say it.
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When we love each other we are immortal and indestructible like the heartbeat and the rain and the wind.
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The music enchanted the air. It was like the south wind, like a warm night, like swelling sails beneath the stars, completely and utterly unreal... It made everything spacious and colourful, the dark stream of life seemed pulsing in it; there were no burdens any more, no limits; there existed only glory and melody and love, so that one simply could not realize that, at the same time as this music was, outside there ruled poverty and torment and despair.
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There was always a screen behind which one could hide— a superior who in turn had his superior— orders, instructions, duties, commands— and finally the many-headed monster, morale, necessity, hard reality, responsibility, or whatever it was called— there was always a screen behind which to evade the simple law of humanity.
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If only they would not look at one so-What great misery can be in two such small spots, no bigger than a man's thumb-in their eyes!
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our heads were full of nebulous ideas, which cast an idealized, almost romantic glow over life
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we developed a firm, practical feeling of solidarity, which grew, on the battlefield, into the best thing that the war produced - comradeship in arms.
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Then we change our possy and lie down again to play cards. We know how to do that: to play cards, to swear, and to fight. Not much for twenty years;--and yet too much for twenty years.
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Where would the world be if we took every man to book? There were thousands of Kantoreks, all of whom were convinced that they were acting for the best- in a way that cost them nothing.
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The tension has worn us out. It is a deadly tension that feels as if a jagged knife blade is being scraped along the spine. Our legs won't function, our hands are trembling and our bodies are like thin membranes stretched over barely repressed madness, holding in what would otherwise be an unrestrained outburst of endless scream.s. We have no flesh, no muscle now
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A man dreams of a miracle and wakes up to loaves of bread.
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And be very careful at the front, Paul.—Ah, Mother, Mother! Why do I not take you in my arms and die with you. What poor wretches we are!
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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
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I glance at my boots. They are big and clumsy, the breeches are tucked into them, and standing up one looks well-built and powerful in those great drainpipes. But when we go bathing and strip, suddenly we have slender legs again and slight shoulders. We are no longer soldiers but little more than boys; no one would believe that we could carry packs. It is a strange moment when we stand naked; then we become civilians, and almost feel ourselves to be so. When bathing Franz Kemmerich looked as slight and frail as a child. There he lies now -- buy why? The whole world ought to pass by this bed and say: That is Franz Kemmerich, nineteen and a half years old, he doesn't want to die. Let him not die!
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And this I know: all these things that now, while we are still in the war, sink down in us like a stone, after the war shall waken again, and then shall begin the disentanglement of life and death.
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He wants me to tell him about the front; he is curious in a way that I find stupid and distressing; I no longer have any real contact with him. There is nothing he likes more than just hearing about it. I realize he does not know that a man cannot talk of such things; I would do it willingly, but it is too dangerous for me to put these things into words. I am afraid they might then become gigantic and I be no longer able to master them. What would become of us if everything that happens out there were quite clear to us?
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