Our obligation is to give meaning to life and in doing so to overcome the passive, indifferent life.

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

I am much more afraid of my good deeds that please me than of my bad deeds that repel me.

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.

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed.

The story of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac are nowhere in any other tradition.

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.