Fiction cannot recite the numbing numbers, but it can be that witness, that memory. A storyteller can attempt to tell the human tale, can make a galaxy out of the chaos, can point to the fact that some people survived even as most people died. And can remind us that the swallows still sing around the smokestacks.

Know, my son, that the enemy will always be with you. He will be in the shadow of your dreams and in your living flesh, for he is the other part of yourself.

I believe that culture begins in the cradle . . .To do without tales and stories and books is to lose humanity's past, is to have no star map for our future.

You are a name, not a number. Never forget that name, whatever they tell you here. You will always be Chaya—life—to me.

Wood may remain twenty years in the water, but it is still not a fish.

If you want to write, you write. Talent is simply not enough.

Write, write, and write some more. Think of writing as a muscle that needs lots of exercise.