The deeper the nostalgia and the more complete the fear, the purer, the richer the word and the secret.

Anything you want to say about God you better make sure you can say in front of a pit of burning babies.

You cross a border and the policeman or the frontier policeman look at you, What are you doing here? Why are you coming? How long will you stay? Well, if I had nearly enough years, I would write a novel about being a refugee.

One thing is that [Tibetans] should not give up hope. That's - even [if] it lasts a century. My discussions with the Dalai Lama always were about that.

In my town we studied the five Books of Moses, but rarely the prophets. We studied the Talmud so much that I sometimes knew the prophets because of the prophetic quotations in the Talmud. We almost never studied the prophets themselves.

When you listen to a witness, you become a witness.

Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.