HELP ASAP! What does the quotation mean literally? From All Quiet on the Western Front I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow... What would our fathers do if we suddenly stood up and came before them and proffered our account? What do they expect of us if a time ever comes when the war is over?

awnser: william shakespeare was an english poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the english language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.

when connie willis was 12 years old, her mother died. in january of 2003, willis was interviewed for locus magazine. she recognized that death is a major issue in her writing, specially because the vacuous and appalling things that people tend to say in order to support you when someone you loved dies.

but there is another aspect that i have learned from connie willis's quote. in his famous work "danubio", the italian writer claudio magris describes literature as house removals. some messages reach us, other messages get lost in the labyrinth. those messages which are our inheritance teach us how to live and how to die, how to love and how to hate, how to laugh and how to cry. i think that tales really shape us if we listen to them. maybe through the stories we read we learn how to emphatize with others, knowing that the bells tolls for every each of us.