David Salinas

“Comrade, I say to the dead man, but I say it calmly, today you tomorrow me, but if I come out of it, comrade, I will fight against this, that has struck us both down; from you taken life-and from me-? Life also. I promise you, comrade. It shall never happen again”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“This dead man is bound up with my life, therefore I must do everything, promise everything in order to save myself; I swear blindly that I mean to live only for his sake and his family, with wet lips I try to placate him--and deep down in me lies the hope that I may buy myself off in this way and perhaps even get out of this; it is a little stratagem: if only I am allowed to escape, then I will see to it. So I open the book and read slowly:--Gerard Duval, compositor.

With the dead man's pencil write the address on an envelope, then swiftly thrust everything back into his tunic.

I have killed the printer, Gerard Duval. I must be a printer, I think confusedly, be a printer, printer...”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“یکجور و یکنواخت کامیون ها تکان می خورند. یکجور و یکنواخت آن دو نفر داد می زنند و یکجور و یکنواخت باران می بارد. روی سر ما می بارد. روی سر مرده هایی که در میدان جنگ افتاده اند و روی بدن جوان موطلایی و زخم روبازش که برای بدن بچگانه او خیلی مهیب و کشنده است. روی قبر کمریش می بارد. و روی قلب ما.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“Now we would wander around like strangers in those landscapes of our youth. We have been consumed in the fires of reality, we perceive differences only in the way tradesmen do, and we see necessities like butchers. We are free of care no longer – we are terrifying indifferent. We might be present in that world, but would we be alive in it?
We are like children who have been abandoned and we are as experienced as old men, we are coarse, unhappy and superficial – I think that we are lost”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front