In the beginning was belief, foolish belief, and faith, empty faith, and illusion, the terrible illusion. ... We believed in God, had faith in man, and lived with the illusion that in each one of us is a sacred spark from the fire of the shekinah, that each one carried in his eyes and in his soul the sign of God. This was the source—if not the cause—of all our misfortune.

I was 15, not 14, when I was inside there [Auschwitz], 15, and for me both were actually a surprise.

Pain is essential. Often I cannot avoid it.Therefore all one can do is redeem it; and the only way to redeem it is through literature, art, poetry, music.

For us it's not easy to be conformist, I cannot stand to be conformist, I don't accept what it is, I like to say no. If I see an injustice I scream.

Paris: city of encounters, of furtive and painful discoveries. All isms converge there, including the anti-isms, all the revolutionaries too, including the counterrevolutionaries .

Still I believe that Hanna Arendt, she was wrong when she tried to say that we are all actually capable of this, it's not true. I think it's not true. There are certain things human beings are not capable of. I mean people, even normal human beings. You have to do certain things in order to become what the enemy was and I didn't accept her philosophical outlook on that.

[Moses] Mendelssohn was a religious Jew. I felt sorry for him.