I thought nothing; I didn’t even despair; I was just stupefied and grey and dead.
We stroll on. Late in the evening we run into Willy and set off together for the barracks. En route Willy suddenly springs to one side and I crouch down likewise. The unmistakable howl of a shell coming – then we look round mystified and laugh. It was merely the screech of an electric tram.
Geriau mirti tada, kai dar nori gyventi, negu tada, kai jau nori mirti.
And so everything is new and brave, red poppies and good food, cigarettes and summer breeze.
Perhaps, thought I, perhaps – always that word, one never could escape it. It was certainty we lacked, certainty that everyone and everything lacked.
The solicitor for whom he used to work in Cologne has written to tell him that women are now doing the work excellently and more cheaply, whereas Jupp, during his time in the army, will have grown out of office requirements, no doubt. He deeply regrets it, so he says; the times are hard. Best wishes for the future.
Her mouth speaks words I do not understand. Nor do I fully understand her eyes; they seem to say more than we anticipated when we came here.
Don’t ask anything more. There are more secrets in your hair than in a thousand questions.
One man’s destroyer is another’s nightingale.
Haie looked round once again and said wrathfully, satisfied and rather mysteriously: “Revenge is black-pudding.
Don’t take it hardly,” said she, looking at me. “Everything passes.” “True,” said I. “The one sure thing in the world.
We stand and gaze. The farmhouse, the remnants of the wood, the heights, the trenches on the sky yonder, – it had been a terrible world and life a burden. Now it is over and will stay behind here; when we set out, it will drop behind us, step by step, and in an hour be gone as if it had never been. – Who can realize it?
Before another three years passed, the book was being burned by the Nazis, who found the depiction of a disillusioned and demoralized German soldiery to be intolerably offensive.
And now we realize what is expected – the Americans want to exchange. It is apparent that they have not long been in the war; they are still collecting souvenirs, shoulder straps, badges, belt buckles, decorations, uniform buttons. In exchange we stock ourselves with soap, cigarettes, chocolate and tinned meat. They even want us to take a handful of money for our dog – but we draw the line there; let them offer what they will, the dog stays with us.
Man lives, you’re right! Whoever seeks further is already lost.
With our young, awakened eyes, we saw that the classical conception of the fatherland held by our teachers resolved itself here into a renunciation of personality such as one would not ask of the meanest servants.
Kat turns his eyes to heaven, lets off a mighty fart, and says meditatively: Every little bean must be heard as well as seen.
For instance, if you train a dog to eat potatoes and then afterwards put a piece of meat in front of him, he’ll snap at it, it’s his nature. And if you give a man a little bit of authority he behaves just the same way, he snaps at it too.
It’s funny how much of the miseries of this world are caused by short people –they are so much more quick-tempered and difficult to get on than the tall ones.
The graveyard is a mass of wreckage. Coffins and corpses lie strewn about. They have been killed once again; but each of them that was flung up saved one of us.