Lice, rats, barbed wire, fleas, shells, bombs, caves, corpses, blood, liquor, mice, cats, gas, artillery, filth, bullets, mortars, fire, steel: that … - Otto Dix

Nobody wants to look at it. What is it all supposed to mean.. ..the old whores and the old, worn out women, and of life is cares?. .It doesn't make anybody happy. No gallery wants to exhibit it.[ his work]. Why do you even bother to paint it.

[..it had been fun] to be able to draw in the midst of boredom and misery..

I'm a man who is concerned with reality. I have to see everything. I have to plumb the depths of life. And so I go to war. That's why I volunteered [in the German army]. And when I tell people that nowadays, they say, "Good grief, so Dix was an out-and-out militarist! How does that fit together? He painted a war picture that was so frightful, so horrific, and now he says he was a militarist?" Yes, that's just it! What I said was: "If you want to be a hero, you have to see this whole mess and still say yes to it.