“But where was I to start? The world is so vast, I shall start with the country I knew best, my own. But my country is so very large. I had better start with my town. But my town, too, is large. I had best start with my street. No, my home. No, my family. Never mind, I shall start with myself.”

Emphasis must be put on learning: there is no substitute to education. It can be briefly formulated in a few words: always, whatever you do in life, think higher and feel deeper.

I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead. and anyone who does not remember betrays them again.

I write to understand as much as to be understood.

My faith is a wounded faith, but my life is not without faith. I didn’t divorce God, but I’m quarrelling and arguing and questioning, it’s a wounded faith.

To forget a Holocaust is to kill twice.

Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.

A Jew must be sensitive to the pain of all human beings. A Jew cannot remain indifferent to human suffering… The mission of the Jewish people has never been to make the world more Jewish, but to make it more human.

Every moment is a new beginning.

No human being is illegal. That is a contradiction in terms. Human beings can be beautiful or more beautiful, they can be fat or skinny, they can be right or wrong, but illegal? How can a human being be illegal?

I marvel at the resilience of the Jewish people. Their best characteristic is their desire to remember. No other people has such an obsession with memory.

You’re shaking … so am I. It’s because of Jerusalem, isn’t it? One doesn’t go to Jerusalem, one returns to it. That’s one of its mysteries.

The most important question a human being has to face. What is it? The question, Why are we here?

In the beginning there was faith – which is childish; trust – which is vain; and illusion – which is dangerous.

For the dead and the living, we must bear witness. Not only are we responsible for the memories of the dead, we are responsible for what we do with those memories

An indifference to suffering makes humans inhuman

Today, as yesterday, a nation is judged by its attitude towards refugees.

Now the two primal Spirits, who reveal themselves in vision as Twins, are the Better and the Bad, in thought and word and action. Between these two the wise ones chose aright; the foolish not so.

Better be jocund with the fruitful Grape Than sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit.

The past is never the past. It is always present. And you better reckon with it in your life and in your daily experience, or it will get you. It will get you really bad.

The life we live is just a colourful and deposit toy. Some of us take it so seriously and fight and cry for it. Some of us break and throw it. Either we give extreme importance, either not enough. Better to stay far from extremes.

There’s nothing my housekeeper does that I can’t do – and maybe better!

I am a mess of insomnia, broken promises, and better tomorrows that never came.

That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.

Better and safer is an assured peace than a victory hoped for. The one is in your own power, the other is in the hands of the gods.