To remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all.

I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes were open and I was alone - terribly alone in a world without God and without (hu)man(ity).

I think this century more than any other really has seen the phenomenon of people being uprooted in such numbers, such a degree. They even have a word for it: The refugees. It's a new word, a 20th Century word, but refugee is actually a misnomer.

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.

Only fanatics — in religion as well as in politics — can find a meaning in someone else’s death.

Not all games are innocent. Some come dangerously close to cruelty.

I wrote my first book, I published it in 1955, it was in Yiddish and it was called And The World Was Silent.