“Newton's Third Law of Conversation, if it existed, would hold that every statement implies an equal and opposite statement. To say that I'd turned the offer down raised the possibility that I might not have done.”

“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”

“we all collide. It made him think of Newton’s third law of motion:for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It was like, whenyou collided with someone, they would not be in the same position as theyused to be. Everyone equally affected one another.”

“When my father-in-law, Jan Vuijst, a Dutch Reformed minister, was on his deathbed, I had a deeply intimate conversation with him - as it turned out, my last conversation with him. He said to me, 'It was a privilege to have lived.' The soulful gratitude of that simple statement will never leave me.”

“Billy coughed when the door was opened, and when he coughed he shit thin gruel. This was in accordance with the Third Law of Motion according to Sir Isaac Newton. This law tells us that for every action there is a reaction and opposite in direction.This can be useful in rocketry.”

“Someday I will understand Auschwitz. This was a brave statement but innocently absurd. No one will ever understand Auschwitz. What I might have set down with more accuracy would have been: Someday I will write about Sophie's life and death, and thereby help demonstrate how absolute evil is never extinguished from the world. Auschwitz itself remains inexplicable. The most profound statement yet made about Auschwitz was not a statement at all, but a response.The query: "At Auschwitz, tell me, where was God?"And the answer: "Where was man?”