Alisa

“Home—what other home existed for one who belonged nowhere, but the stormy one in the heart of another for a short time? Was not this the reason why love, when it struck the hearts of the homeless, shook and possessed them so completely—because they had nothing else? Had he not for this very reason tried to avoid it? And had it not followed him and overtaken him and struck him down? It was harder to rise again on the slippery ice of a foreign land than on familiar and accustomed ground.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, Arch of Triumph: A Novel of a Man Without a Country

“I don’t know what it is. I simply can’t stand it. It’s like a hand reaching out of the dark. It is fear—blind fear as if it were lying in wait somewhere for me.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, Arch of Triumph: A Novel of a Man Without a Country

“The simplest and the most incredible thing in the world had come true again: two people speaking to each other, each for himself; and sounds, called words, shaped the same images and feelings in that palpitating mass behind the skull, and out of meaningless vibrations of the vocal chords and their unexplainable reactions in the viscous gray convolutions, skies suddenly grew again in which were mirrored clouds, brooks, past times, growth and decay and hard-won wisdom.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, Arch of Triumph: A Novel of a Man Without a Country

“I don’t want to get old.”
“You won’t get old. Life will pass over your face, that will be all, and it will become more beautiful. One is old only when one no longer feels.”
“No. When one no longer loves.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, Arch of Triumph: A Novel of a Man Without a Country