I have to be self-conscious of what I'm trying to do with my life.

I've given my life to the principle and the ideal of memory, and remembrance.

I'm a teacher and a writer; my life is words. When I see the denigration of language, it hurts me, and it's easy to denigrate a word by trivializing it.

That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life - that is what is abnormal.

In any case, he had bungled his life. Bad husband, bad father, bad lover: failure all along the line . . . All the springs were broken. No more light anywhere . . . Everything he had tried to build had fallen apart. The little good he had done had resulted in fiasco. Whose fault could it be other than his own? . . . And anyone will tell you that if God Himself cannot undo what happened, still less can man.

I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead. and anyone who does not remember betrays them again.