Look, if I were alone in the world, I would have the right to choose despair, solitude and self-fulfillment. But I am not alone.

If I were immersed in constant melancholy, I would not be who I am.

Sometimes I am asked if I know 'the response to Auschwitz; I answer that not only do I not know it, but that I don't even know if a tragedy of this magnitude has a response.

I do not belong to this world. I continue to write everything in longhand. If I have to see something on the Internet, I ask my secretary or students. I am lucky, because I have people who do it for me.

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

We have to go into the despair and go beyond it, by working and doing for somebody else, by using it for something else.