It is difficult to be generous-minded to those we have greatly harmed.
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.
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?
When I was a kid, the world was such a big place, and I had no idea that I would be afforded these great moments in between doing what I love to do.
Why do people not listen when you say no? Why do they think you are too stupid or too young to understand? Why do they think you are too shy to reply? Why do they keep badgering you until you will say yes?
Online communities are an expression of loneliness.
I leave to children exclusively, but only for the life of their childhood, all and every the dandelions of the fields and the daisies thereof, with the right to play among them freely, according to the custom of children, warning them at the same time against the thistles. And I devise to children the yellow shores of creeks and the golden sands beneath the water thereof, with the dragon flies that skim the surface of said waters, and and the odors of the willows that dip into said waters, and the white clouds that float on high above the giant trees.