Henirch Boll, What's to Become of the Boy

"Not long ago, we were asked by Frank G., aged thirty-seven, born in the last year but one of the war, why we hadn't emigrated, and we found it hard to explain that such an idea was simply beyond the realm of our imagination: it was as if someone had asked why I hadn't ordered a taxi to the moon." -- pg. 29.

"Depressed, we would wend our way home, along the railway embankment, the dust of summer on our lips, the smell of the wheat fields-- I had it in my heart, my brain, my consciousness, that foretaste, which only a few years later, turned out to be correct: I knew that I would be caught up in it, that I lacked the strength and the courage to elude the two uniforms in store for me." -- pg. 46