There is not anti-semitism as an ideology. The civilized world must think that anti-semitism is stupid.

Writers write because they cannot allow the characters that inhabit them to suffocate them. These characters want to get out, to breathe fresh air and partake of the wine of friendship; were they to remain locked in, they would forcibly break down the walls. It is they who force the writer to tell their stories.

Had the situation not been so tragic, we might have laughed.

The stars were only sparks of the fire which devoured us. Should that fire die out one day, there would be nothing left in the sky but dead stars, dead eyes.

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.

Knowledge does not corrupt, unless it is arrogant; but then it is not true knowledge.

Whoever survives a test, whatever it may be, must tell the story. That is his duty.