“The living take a part of the dead with them, carrying them around in their minds, like a song that lingers after the music has been turned off.”

“Smells, I think, may be the last thing on earth to die.”

“The past is a presence between us. In all my mother does and says, the past continually discloses itself in the smallest ways. She sees it directly; I see its shadow. Still, it pulses in my fingert...”

“Memory for most is a kind of afterlife; for my mother, it is another form of life.”

“Generally, there is a lot of truth value in stepping back, observing, then logically generalizing the extremes of what you see.”

“Generally, there is a lot of truth value in stepping back, observing, then logically generalizing the extremes of what you see.”

“I only care for the subjective life; I am very German, you see: The woods interest me, and the world does not.”

“A dog is der Hund the dog; a women is die Frau the wom[an]; a horse is das Pferd, the horse; now you put that dog in the Genitive case, & is he the same dog he was before? No sir; he is das Hundes;...”

“Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but quickly to see how to make them good.”

“Thou shalt not be a victim, thou shalt not be a perpetrator, but, above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.”

“If we bear all this suffering and if there are still Jews left, when it is over, then Jews, instead of being doomed, will be held up as an example.”

“Fiction cannot recite the numbing numbers, but it can be that witness, that memory. A storyteller can attempt to tell the human tale, can make a galaxy out of the chaos, can point to the fact that ...”