Long is the night to him who is awake; long is a mile to him who is tired; long is life to the foolish who do not know the true law.
Except that a human being is both the public and the private. We are both, private and public in the same person.
In order to fly, you have to give up the ground you are standing on.
The darkest days in my life after the war, after the war, was when I discovered that the. . . most of the members and commanders of the Einsatz group that were doing the killings, not even in gas chambers, but killing with machine guns, had college degrees from German universities and PhD's and MD's. Couldn't believe it.
I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation.
No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night. We know that every moment is a moment of grace, every hour an offering; not to share them would mean to betray them. Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately.
No human being is illegal. That is a contradiction in terms. Human beings can be beautiful or more beautiful, they can be fat or skinny, they can be right or wrong, but illegal? How can a human being be illegal?
There is an irreplaceable ally. It's called the United States of America.
If you are disappearing from yourself, but you're still writing, then there is a kind of activity of thinking going on, which in my world is similar to what's going on in music.
Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
Life, even in the hardest times, is full of moments to savor. They will not come this way again, not in this way.