Novel All Quiet On The Western Front Novels & Stories

He had always been the solitary type. Back in high school, he had had no shortage of admirers. When he got to college, girls flocked to him like fish in a river, too many to count. His cousin was like a clueless bachelor, with zero interest in the whole love game. However, as one would say, when the old house went up in flames, it would really blaze. The others got curious too. "Who's the girl? Do we know her? Have we met her?" "You'll see," Stephen said. That shut down any further questions.

But the truth was that noise was the best companion when the war was over and my parents were unheard at home. "Silence was what I heard before the bloodbath took place in the war," I admitted, and I watched her pause in surprise. "It's hard to explain because a war itself is noisy, but there is a moment when everything goes quiet; not even the animals make noise, and the wind itself decides to make silence to give tension to a moment as raw as a battle is. The energy expended is so much that then everything explodes, and a part of my mind chose to quiet the background noise to understand what was going on around me."

I will vanish into the cracks. I smile. It is a small, hard smile. "Burn them all, Aureliano," I whisper to the smoke. "Burn them all for me." I let the curtain fall. I turn back to the room. The silence is loud. The war has started. And I have a front-row seat.

The room swam before my eyes, not from tears, but from the cold sweat of pain. Three years of memories spun in my head like a whirlwind. Roman, taking bullets for me, smoothing over family disputes... Yet, those memories always stopped at his face when he excused Liliana, that mix of helplessness and leniency. The first time we met, Liliana's bad intel led to a bullet in my chest and our cargo stolen. I was furious, demanding Roman make it right, but he just stroked my hair and said, "Eleanor, it was just a mix-up with the map. Liliana didn't mean any harm. I've already grounded her."

When I regained consciousness, I saw my mother crying. Once she noticed that I was awake, she quickly wiped her tears away, held my hand, and asked worriedly, “How do you feel, Luna?” I did not cry when I learned that Winnie was pregnant with Jake’s baby, nor did I cry when I felt the life within me slowly fade away as I lay on the cold operating table, but when I saw the sympathy on my mother’s face, I could no longer hold my grief back. I bawled.

That's how people on the edge of divorce should act. Worried Prof. Dalloz might go in harder, I leaned close. "Prof. Dalloz, we're on his plane. Maybe ease up a little?" Another cold snort. But he didn't say a word. Just stared out the window. "I'm gonna rest for a bit," he said, eyes drifting shut. That was the last time he did. He looked the same—head high, back straight. Even in death, he still carried that quiet pride.

Away from the hacking oldster near the exit blowing the snot out his nose while rain pelted the sidewalk outside. Wondered if maybe somewhere around some long-forgotten corner there was a war-time love story to be found. A tale about some dazzling soldier marching into the life of an ordinary Plain Jane to be her destined One and Only before bravely heading into battle. A moment later, with a final sniff from the decrepit cashier guarding the door, the quiet returned. She stopped. Looked at the shelves. Saw more BIOGRAPHY. Squatting, heel to backside, she wiggled a small volume free from its neighbors. German title. German text. Simple drawings with German captions.

“ It might seem like that sometimes, but like I said before, life is more about how you react to what happened to you. Take those soldiers who went to war and came back a shadow of themselves? Yeah, they'd lost something they'd once treasured, but it's honestly not really what they lost that matters but how they react to what's lost. ” “ Hm… ” Mira thought about the book they'd just finished reading which shook both of them. The book was titled, Home front by a best selling author, Kristin Hannah. The book had been based on a woman who'd gone to war with the dreadful words of, “ I don't love you anymore. ” from her husband.