“Sometimes the soul takes pictures of things it has wished for, but never seen.”

“The soul was not cured, it was as full as a clothes closet of dresses that did not fit.”

“Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard.”

“Sometimes I fly like an eagle but with the wings of a wren”

“After Auschwitz"Anger,as black as a hook,overtakes me.Each day,each Nazitook, at 8: 00 A.M., a babyand sauteed him for breakfastin his frying pan.And death looks on with a casual eyeand picks at the dirt under his fingernail.Man is evil,I say aloud.Man is a flowerthat should be burnt,I say aloud.Manis a bird full of mud,I say aloud.And death looks on with a casual eyeand scratches his anus.Man with his small pink toes,with his miraculous fingersis not a templebut an outhouse,I say aloud.Let man never again raise his teacup.Let man never again write a book.Let man never again put on his shoe.Let man never again raise his eyes,on a soft July night.Never. Never. Never. Never. Never.I say those things aloud.I beg the Lord not to hear.”

“Anne, I don't want to live. . . . Now listen, life is lovely, but I Can't Live It. I can't even explain. I know how silly it sounds . . . but if you knew how it Felt. To be alive, yes, alive, but not be able to live it. Ay that's the rub. I am like a stone that lives . . . locked outside of all that's real. . . . Anne, do you know of such things, can you hear???? I wish, or think I wish, that I were dying of something for then I could be brave, but to be not dying, and yet . . . and yet to [be] behind a wall, watching everyone fit in where I can't, to talk behind a gray foggy wall, to live but to not reach or to reach wrong . . . to do it all wrong . . . believe me, (can you?) . . . what's wrong. I want to belong. I'm like a jew who ends up in the wrong country. I'm not a part. I'm not a member. I'm frozen.”

“The children are all crying in their pensand the surf carries their cries away.They are old men who have seen too much,their mouths are full of dirty clothes,the tongues poverty, tears like puss.The surf pushes their cries back.Listen.”