“That it is fairly improbable to get much emotional response out of this man, I am convinced. There is a long-conditioned hardness, an outer shell which has been worn and used so long, probably nothing exists beneath it. Having dealt with force, violence, and easy dispositions of the lives of others, it is questionable as to how much value he puts on life in general, including his own in particular. This was not discussed with him, though it would be interesting to get some information on that point. Getting a sincere or emotionally meaningful answer from him is like trying to bail water from a long-dry well.”

“Ribbentrop brushed aside the Jewish extermination events. He said that in the long view, historically, the Jews' extermination would always be a blot on German history, but that it was in a way attributable to the fact that Hitler had lost his sense of proportion and, because he was losing the war, went "wild" on the subject of the Jews. But the big historical issue was not that Jews had been exterminated but that Germany had really been oppressed and never given a chance.”

“Once, walking with him, Paola had stopped and asked him what he was thinking about, and the fact that she was the only person in the world he would not be embarrassed to tell just what it was he had been thinking about at that moment convinced him, though a thousand things had already done so, that this was the woman he wanted to marry, had to marry, would marry.”

“He claimed the waters must have, indeed, been healing, because look how hard his journey was on him to get there, and how easy it was on him to get home.”

“He had given me so much information, I wanted some time to absorb it all, but I didn't want to leave him. Not like this. Not ever, as long as I lived. Or until I had to get back on the case. Whichever came first.”

“Who is left in the ghetto is the one man in a thousand in any age, in any culture, who through some mysterious workings of force within his soul will stand in defiance against any master. He is that one human in a thousand whose indomitable spirit will not bow. He is the one man in a thousand whose indomitable spirit cannot bow. He is the one man in a thousand who will not walk quietly to Umschlagplatz. Watch out for him, Alfred Funk, we have pushed him to the wall.”

“Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters suffering, in order that they may have existence.”