Erich Maria Remarque Quotes

Erich Maria Remarque was a German writer, probably most famous for his war novel, All Quiet on the Western Front (1929). He was born Erich Paul Remark, but he changed his middle name to honor his mother. His books were burned and banned in the 1930's by the Nazis in Germany. Here are a few quotes from the works of Erich Maria Remarque.

• "We are at rest five miles behind the front. Yesterday we were relieved, and now our bellies are full of beef and haricot beans. We are satisfied and at peace."
  - Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, Ch. 1
  
  
• "We march up, moody or good-tempered soldiers - we reach the zone where the front begins and become on the instant human animals."
  - Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front,
  
  
• "The leader of our group, shrewd, cunning, and hard-bitten, forty years of age, with a face of the soil, blue eyes, bent shoulders, and a remarkable nose for dirty weather, good food, and soft jobs."
  - Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, Ch. 1
  
  
• "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."
  - Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, Ch. 1
  
  
• "One could sit like this forever."
  - Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, Ch. 1
  
  
• "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. Katczinsky said that was a result of their upbringing. It made them stupid. And what Kat said, he had thought about."
  - Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, Ch. 1
  
  
• "Yes, that's the way they think, these hundred thousand Kantoreks! Iron Youth! Youth! We are none of us more than twenty years old. But young? That is long ago. We are old folk."
  - Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, Ch. 1
  
  
• "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."- Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, Ch. 2
  
  
• "That is Kat. If for one hour in a year something eatable were to be had in some one place only, within that hour, as if moved by a vision, he would put on his cap, go out and walk directly there, as though following a compass, and find it."
  - Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, Ch. 3
  
  
• "You take it from me, we are losing the war because we can salute too well."
  - Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, Ch. 3
  
  
• "To me the front is a mysterious whirlpool. Though I am in still water far away from its center, I feel the whirl of the vortex sucking me slowly, irresistibly, inescapably into itself."
  - Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, Ch. 4
  
  
• "The war has ruined us for everything."
  - Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, Ch. 5
  
  
• "We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war."
  - Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, Ch. 5
  
  
• "We lie under the network of arching shells and live in a suspense of uncertainty. If a shot comes, we can duck, that is all; we neither know nor can determine where it will fall."
  - Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, Ch. 6
  
  
• "Bombardment, barrage, curtain-fire, mines, gas, tanks, machine-guns, hand-grenades--words, words, words, but they hold the horror of the world."
  - Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, Ch. 6
  
  
• "There is a distance, a veil between us."
  - Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, Ch. 6
  
  
• "But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. 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."
  - Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, Ch. 9
  
  
• "I will come back again! I will come back again!"
  - Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, Ch. 10