The journalistic vision sharpens to the point of maximum impact every event, every individual and social configuration; but the honing is uniform.

Words that are saturated with lies or atrocity, do not easily resume life.

We know that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day's work at Auschwitz in the morning.

I have every reason to believe that an individual man or woman fluent in several tongues seduces, possesses, remembers differently according to his or her use of the relevant language.

I have students who are now in chairs in five continents. They invite me to their inaugurals. A tremendous reward.

Central to everything I am and believe and have written is my astonishment, naive as it seems to people, that you can use human speech both to bless, to love, to build, to forgive and also to torture, to hate, to destroy and to annihilate.

Language is the main instrument of man's refusal to accept the world as it is.