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

Author: Erich Maria Remarque