In their behavior toward creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right.
One can find in the Yiddish tongue and in the Yiddish spirit expressions of pious joy, lust for life, longing for the Messiah, patience and deep appreciation of human individuality.
It is a fact that the classics of Yiddish literature are also the classics of the modern Hebrew literature.
In the history of old Jewish literature there was never any basic difference between the poet and the prophet. Our ancient poetry often became law and a way of life.
In our time, when the literature for adults is deteriorating, good books for children are the only hope, the only refuge.
God gave us so many emotions, and so many strong ones. Every human being, even if he is an idiot, is a millionaire in emotions.
The very essence of literature is the war between emotion and intellect, between life and death. When literature becomes too intellectual – when it begins to ignore the passions, the emotions – it becomes sterile, silly, and actually without substance.
The analysis of character is the highest human entertainment.
No doubt the world is entirely an imaginary world, but it is only once removed from the true world.
What do they know-all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world – about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.
But what about the creatures whose flesh he’s carrying there? A few days ago they were alive. They too have souls. They too are God’s children. They were quite possibly made of better material than human beings. Since they were sinless, they were certainly more innocent. But day after day they are ritually sacrificed-angels in the shape of oxen, calves, sheep. I once wanted to become a vegetarian. I wanted everything-and I never got further than wanting.
Children don t read to find their identity to free themselves from guilt to quench the thirst for rebellion or to get rid of alienation. They have no use for psychology... They still believe in God the family angels devils witches goblins logic clarity punctuation and other such obsolete stuff... When a book is boring they yawn openly. They don t expect their writer to redeem humanity but leave to adults such childish illusions.
Those who understand the complexities of human nature know that joy and pain, ugliness and beauty, love and hate, mercy and cruelty and other conflicting emotions often blend and cannot be separated from each other.
A soldier who serves an emperor has to have a uniform, and this also applies to a soldier who serves the Almighty.
His eyes reflected a softness I had already forgotten in America.
That glimmer of light, surrounded by so many shadows, seemed to say without words: Evil has not yet taken complete dominion. A spark of hope is still left.
There is no such thing as love. Give me a cigarette. In the camp, people climbed on one another like worms.
Wann immer ich vom Leben den Status quo erwarte, taucht etwas ganz unerwartetes auf. Die Weltgeschichte ist aus dem gleichen Teig gemacht wie Semmeln. Hauptsache, sie sind frisch.
Where do the wheels of history lead? How can you be so sure that the wheels of history won’t get bogged down in blood and marrow again?
Darwin and Karl Marx didn’t reveal the secret of the world. Of all the theories about creation, the one expounded in Genesis is the most intelligent. All this talk about primordial mists or the Big Bang is a wild absurdity. If someone found a watch on an island and said it had been made by itself or that it developed through evolution, he would be considered a lunatic. But according to modern science, the universe evolved all on its own. Is the universe less complicated than a watch?