"This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war."

“It is very queer that the unhappiness of the world is often brought on by short people. They are so much more energetic and uncompromising than the big fellows.”

“I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony — Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?”

“I am very quiet. Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear.”

“No, we are not related. No, we are not related. Do I walk? Have I feet still? I raise my eyes, I let them move round, and turn myself with them, one circle, one circle, and I stand in the midst. All is usual. Only the Militiaman Stanislaus Katczinsky has died. Then I know nothing more.”

“It is just as much a matter of chance that I am still alive as that I might have been hit. In a bomb-proof dugout I might have been smashed to atoms, and in the open survive ten hours' bombardment unscathed. No soldier survives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.”

“A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might transform them into our friends.”