“A miracle is never perfect when it happens, there are always little disappointments. But once it’s gone for good and nothing can change it, memory could make it perfect and then it would never change. If I can just call it to life now, won’t it always stay the same? Won’t it stay with me as long as I live?”

German novelist

Erich Maria Remarque was a German novelist whose work became closely associated with the experience of World War I. He is best known for All Quiet on the Western Front, published in 1928, a novel drawn from his service in the Imperial German Army. All Quiet on the Western Front became an international bestseller and helped shape a new kind of war writing by veterans. Its anti-war outlook drew Nazi hostility, and Joseph Goebbels denounced Remarque as unpatriotic. He later lived in Switzerland as a refugee and moved on to the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen.