“Emotion constricted Hawke’s throat. He suddenly understood why the victims of concentration camps had walked quietly to the gas chambers. In the face of horror and insanity, it was the one human thing to do. Not the noble thing, not the heroic thing—the human thing. To live succumbing to the insanity, was the ultimate loss of pride.”

“He main retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevsky said once, 'There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings'.”

“Maybe compassion is compulsion, creativity is insanity. If this is so, then is craziness a good thing, the source of our humanity?”

“A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes - within the limits of endowment and environment- he has made out of himself. In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.”

“one of the worst things about being a parent, for me, is the self-discovery, the being face to face with one's secret insanity and brokenness and rage.”

“You are not insane if you believe in things that don't exist. You are insane if you are the only one believing in it. This is the difference between religion and insanity. ”