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

Sometimes I am asked if I know 'the response to Auschwitz; I answer that not only do I not know it, but that I don't even know if a tragedy of this magnitude has a response.

Once upon a time refugee meant somebody who has a refuge, found a place, a haven where he could find refuge.

Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to life as long as God himself

[My approach to the Bible, history does really matter.] Everything matters. But I have priorities. For instance, for me to know whether there were two Isaiahs or one is less important than the text itself. Of course I read the arguments for and against. But it's not my task in life to say there were two or three authors of Isaiah's book, or how many authors there were of Deuteronomy. This is not what I'm doing.

That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life - that is what is abnormal.

A destruction, an annihilation that only man can provoke, only man can prevent.