It was like a page torn from a history book, from some historical novel about the captivity of babylon or Spanish Inquisition.

Humanity? Humanity is not concerned with us. Today anything is allowed. Anything is possible.

Certain things, certain events, seem inexplicable only for a time: up to the moment when the veil is torn aside.

I've given my life to the principle and the ideal of memory, and remembrance.

The act of writing is for me often nothing more than the secret or conscious desire to carve words on a tombstone: to the memory of a town forever vanished, to the memory of a childhood in exile, to the memory of all those I loved and who, before I could tell them I loved them, went away.

I respect scholarship. But I don't like to do things half-heartedly.

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?