Erich Maria Remarque

About her neck was tied a white scarf that looked like a stock. Her hair was brown and silky and in the lamplight had an amber sheen. Her shoulders were very straight but inclined a little forward, her hands were slender, a bit long, and bony rather than soft. Her face was narrow and pale, but the large eyes gave it an almost passionate strength.

Beside me the unknown girl was talking—she spoke softly and slowly in that deep, exciting, slightly hoarse voice. I emptied my glass.

Dusk flitted on bat's wings over the graveyard. The sky behind the Trades Hall was green as unripe apples. The street lamps were already lighted, though it was hardly dark yet—they looked as if they were freezing.

He is the only man I know who has known how to extract a small happiness out of a great misfortune. He does not know any more what to do with his life—so he rejoices simply that he is still alive."

. I would like to have started some light, gay conversation, a really good conversation, the sort that usually occurs to one afterwards when one is alone again.

side comforts—the luggage carrier,

Tomorrow or the day after I'd throw myself into the struggle for a livelihood, the daily round of parry and thrust, of deceptions and half-lies, but tonight the city held out its impartial face to me like a monstrance, every feature etched in the finest filigree. It had not yet caught me up in its net, but confronted me as equal to equal. Time seemed to stand still, as though for this one moment in the darkness the great scales were evenly balanced between active and passive.

Maybe the fall has hit me harder than you. In the fall all pacts are suspended. In the fall people only want ... What do we want in the fall?"
"Love," I said.

"It's fall," she said, with one of her abrupt changes of mood. "It's a hard season to live through even without being alone."

editorials were abominable, packed with bloodthirsty, arrogant lies. The whole outside world was represented as degenerate, treacherous, stupid, and good for nothing else but to be taken over by Germany.