You get attached to places, you know. Like people, I suppose.

And so I write this for you, My Sarah. With the hope that one day, when you’re old enough, this story that lives with me, will live with you as well. When a story is told, it is not forgotten. It becomes something else, a memory of who we were; the hope of what we can become.

I wanted to cry, but the tears did not come.

You get attached to places, you know. Like people, I suppose.

I wanted to say sorry, I wanted to tell her I could not forget the roundup, the camp, Michel's death, and the direct train to Auschwitz that had taken her parents away forever. Sorry for what? he had retaliated, why should I, an American, feel sorry, hadn't my fellow countrymen freed France in June 1944? I had nothing to be sorry for, he laughed. I had looked at him straight in the eyes. Sorry for not knowing. Sorry for being forty-five years old and not knowing.

She couldn't imagine why there was such a difference between those children and her. She couldn't imagine why she and all these other people with her had to be treated this way. Who decided this, and what for?

I think they're really linked. I think books and movies are going to go a long way together in the future. I think we writers are very important material for directors.