Our ignorance allowed us to live, as you are in the mountains, and your rope is frayed and about to break, but you don't know it and feel safe.

Perhaps Kafka laughed when he told stories [. . . ] because one isn't always equal to oneself.

If a writer is convinced that he is honest, then it is very difficult for him to be a bad writer.

There are few men who know how to go to their deaths with dignity, and often they are not those whom one would expect.

Even in this place one can survive, and therefore one must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness; and that to survive we must force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of civilization. We are slaves, deprived of every right, exposed to every insult, condemned to certain death, but we still possess one power, and we must defend it with all our strength for it is the last — the power to refuse our consent.

An enemy who sees the error of his ways ceases to be an enemy.

He could hardly read or write but his heart spoke the language of the good