Man, by definition, is born a stranger: coming from nowhere, he is thrust into an alien world which existed before him-a world which didn't need him. And which will survive him.

But because of his telling, many who did not believe have come to believe, and some who did not care have come to care. He tells the story, out of infinite pain, partly to honor the dead, but also to warn the living - to warn the living that it could happen again and that it must never happen again. Better than 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. (vi)

In order to fly, you have to give up the ground you are standing on.

Just as man cannot live without dreams, he cannot live without hope. If dreams reflect the past, hope summons the future.

I needed to know that there was such a thing as love and that it brought smiles and joy in its wake.

You’re shaking … so am I. It’s because of Jerusalem, isn’t it? One doesn’t go to Jerusalem, one returns to it. That’s one of its mysteries.

We're both [with Elie Wiesel] a long way from the position of the so-called Biblical minimalists. Some of them see no history in the Bible until Josiah.