Refugee today means somebody who has no home. No homeland. No security. No government to protect him or her. And it is of course one feels not only uprooted, one feels useless. One feels always surrounded by hostile forces. Arousing suspicion.

I was very, very religious. And of course I wrote about it in 'Night.' I questioned God's silence. So I questioned. I don't have an answer for that. Does it mean that I stopped having faith? No. I have faith, but I question it.

The story [of the Sacrifice of Isaac ] is much more a part of theology than of history.

We're alone, but we are capable of communicating to one another both our loneliness and our desire to break through it. You say, 'I'm alone.' Someone answers, 'I'm alone too.' There's a shift in the scale of power. A bridge is thrown between the two abysses.

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.

Better that one heart be broken a thousand times in the retelling, he has decided, if it means that a thousand other hearts need not be broken at all.

Perhaps fate isn't blind after all. Perhaps it's capable of fantasy, even compassion.