“The pair of them were again in the eye of a storm of misery - their world was a storm of misery and they were caught in its center, in the deceptive stillness that had allowed them to forget, once upon a time, that all around them was a stinging whirl of hatred that would catch them - it was everywhere and everything and they'd been fools to think they could leave their small safe place and not be caught in that vortex like every other living creature in Eretz.”
“Stars of David were plastered to their shirts, and misery was attached to them as if assigned. "Don't forget your misery..." In some cases, it grew on them like a vine.”
“When they arrived in full, the noise of their feet throbbed on top of the road. Their eyes were enormous in their starving skulls. And the dirt. The dirt was molded to them . . . Their feet could barely rise above the ground . . . Stars of David were plastered on their shirts, and misery was attached to them as if assigned. "Don't forget your misery . . ."At their side, the soldiers also made their way pat, ordering them to hurry up and stop moaning. Some of the those soldiers were only boys. They had the Fuhrer in their eyes.”
“I'll never forget the first day in Auschwitz, the first time in Mauthausen. At that second place, as time wore on, I also picked them up from the bottom of the great cliff, when their escapes fell awfully awry. There were broken bodies and dead m sweet hearts. Still, it was better than the gas. Some of them I caught when they were only halfway down, Saved you, I'd think, holding their souls in midair as the rest of their being-their physical shells-plummeted to the earth. All of them were like, like the cases of empty walnuts. Smoky sky in those places. The smell like a stove, but still so cold. ”
“It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death: I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck.”
“The people didn't really want to be saints of self-deprivation and hatred of the world. They knew that the world would sooner or later deprive them of all it had given them, but still they liked it.”