Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death. So long as you are alive, your case is doubtful; you have a right only to their skepticism.

What really counted was the possibility of escape, a leap to freedom, out of the implacable ritual, a wild run for it that would give whatever chance for hope there was. Of course, hope meant being cut down on some street corner, as you ran like mad, by a random bullet. But when I really thought it through, nothing was going to allow me such a luxury. Everything was against it; I would just be caught up in the machinery again.

There is nothing abstract about pain. It is specific, it is real, and, when it is intense, it is world destroying.

It is in the thick of calamity that one gets hardened to the truth - in other words, to silence.

I am not made for politics because I am incapable of wanting or accepting the death of the adversary.

We have to live and let live in order to create what we are.

A true masterpiece does not tell everything.