Bite your lips, little brother...Don't cry. Keep your anger, your hate, for another day, for later. The day will come but not now...Wait. Clench your teeth and wait.

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.

People become the stories they hear and the stories they tell.

It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.

Everything is in it: the promise and the hope and the fear and the challenge and the defiance. The test is a double test: Just as God tested Abraham, Abraham tested God: "Let's see if you really want me to go ahead with it and kill my son." Then the angel says, "Do not raise your hand against the boy" [Genesis 22:12]. It was the Angel of God who says this, not God. God was embarrassed. [All laugh]

Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.

One can do without solutions. Only the questions matter. We may share them or turn away from them.