Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil.

It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.

When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.

When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity.

Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.

Someone who hates one group will end up hating everyone - and, ultimately, hating himself or herself.

For me, every hour is grace. And I feel gratitude in my heart each time I can meet someone and look at his or her smile.

Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.

Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.

No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.

A destruction, an annihilation that only man can provoke, only man can prevent.

Once you bring life into the world, you must protect it. We must protect it by changing the world.

Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.

Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.

Mankind must remember that peace is not God's gift to his creatures; peace is our gift to each other.

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.

We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.

I think I could be a cook. Everybody always says I'm good, though I think it's quite gruelling as a profession.

Fiction is the thing I esteem most in my own work; I feel that, even if it's no good, only I could have written those books.

When I was in college, I was always saying I was a socialist.

I was always ambitious - not to make money: to be published.

I'm not such a fan of imagination. If you're alive to details, they oftentimes suggest a richer or deeper imaginative line than you would have imagined.