After my father's death, nothing could touch me any more.

We believed in God, trusted in man, and lived with the illusion that every one of us has been entrusted with a sacred spark.

I still believe in man in spite of man. I believe in language even though it has been wounded, deformed, and perverted by the enemies of mankind. And I continue to cling to words because it is up to us to transform them into instruments of comprehension rather than contempt. It is up to us to choose whether we wish to use them to curse or to heal, to wound or to console.

How can one explain the attraction terror holds for some minds — and why for intellectuals? . . .In a totalitarian and terrorist regime, man is no longer a unique being with infinite possibilities and limitless choices but a number, a puppet, with just this difference — numbers and puppets are not susceptible to fear.

I've been fighting my entire adult life for men and women everywhere to be equal and to be different. But there is one right I would not grant anyone. And that is the right to be indifferent.

[ Rabbi Shlomo ben Isaac] was the greatest commentator [of the Bible] we ever had.

I was convinced that hatred among nations and among people perished in Auschwitz. It didn't. The victims died but the haters are still here.