Warmed-over loves and soups are generally not recommended.

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

I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation.

It was pitch dark. I could hear only the violin, and it was as though Juliek's soul were the bow. He was playing his life. The whole of his life was gliding on the strings--his last hopes, his charred past, his extinguished future. He played as he would never play again...When I awoke, in the daylight, I could see Juliek, opposite me, slumped over, dead. Near him lay his violin, smashed, trampled, a strange overwhelming little corpse.

Nevertheless, we are led to believe that true words can communicate more than truth, they communicate what life is all about, that it's threatened, when it's threatened, when it's in danger, then it becomes a curse or a blessing.

I feel that books, just like people, have a destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both.

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