Holocaust Literature Quotes

If we take the capsulation of minorities within the nation-state as a given condition, the implication of the Holocaust is that the life and liberties of minorities depend primarily upon whether the dominant group includes them within its universe of obligation; these are the bonds that hold or the bonds that break. ~ Helen Fein

When a man dies, his secrets bond like crystals, like frost on a window. His last breath obscures the glass. ~ Anne Michaels

They brought me tea and toast; the tea was undrinkable, but the kindness was touching. ~ Hélène Berr

Nothing about these times makes any sense. Nothing. Putting it to words only makes it sound too simple. ~ Ralph Webster

I thought those were others. Soon, I was to learn that they were us. ~ Ralph Webster

We did not speak of what we had seen. At the time, to speak of it seemed worse than sacrilege: We had witnessed a thing so terrible that it acquired a dreadful holiness. It was a miracle of evil. It was not possible to say with words what we had witnessed, and so we kept it safely guarded until the time we could bring it out, and show it to others, and say, 'Behold. This is the worst thing man can do'. ~ Irene Gut Opdyke

Our backyard looked like a marketplace. Valuable objects, precious rugs, silver candlesticks, Bibles and other ritual objects were strewn over the dusty grounds- pitiful relics that seemed never to have had a home. All this under a magnificent blue sky. ~ Elie Wiesel

Ask me no questions," answered Köhn, "and I'll tell you no lies. ~ Bruno Apitz

I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead. and anyone who does not remember betrays them again. ~ Elie Wiesel

The tombstones smashed in Hebrew cemeteries and plundered for Polish sidewalks; today bored citizens, staring at their feet while waiting for a bus, can still read the inscriptions. ~ Anne Michaels

As always when men have too much to say to one another, they found no words. But the inexpressible thing that was taking place outside was uttered in Krämer's rough heartiness and Runki's clumsy tenderness, and the noise and the shots around the camp gave it its meaning.
Krämer closed his eyes. ~ Bruno Apitz

I can tell you that events were incremental, that the unbelievable became the believable and, ultimately, the normal. ~ Ralph Webster

Destruction doesn't create a vacuum, it simply transforms presence into absence. ~ Anne Michaels

Where they burn books, at the end they also burn people ~ Heinrich Heine

It was a place nobody wanted to stay and look at, but almost everyone did. Shaped like a long, broken arm, the road contained several houses with lacerated windows and bruised walls. The Star of David was painted on their doors. Those houses were almost like lepers. At the very least, they were infected sores on the injured German terrain. ~ Markus Zusak

To understand how that astounding moral blindness was possible, it is helpful to think of the workers of an armament plant who rejoice in the 'stay of execution' of their factory thanks to big new orders, while at the same time honestly bewailing the massacres visited upon each other by Ethiopians and Eritreans; or to think how it is possible that the 'fall in commodity prices' may be universally welcomed as good news while 'starvation of African children' is equally universally, and sincerely, lamented. ~ Zygmunt Bauman

Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories. The first - the story of our quest for sexual love - is well known and well charted, its vagaries form the staple of music and literature, it is socially accepted and celebrated. The second - the story of our quest for love from the world - is a more secret and shameful tale. If mentioned, it tends to be in caustic, mocking terms, as something of interest chiefly to envious or deficient souls, or else the drive for status is interpreted in an economic sense alone. And yet this second love story is no less intense than the first, it is no less complicated, important or universal, and its setbacks are no less painful. There is heartbreak here too. ~ Alain De Botton

If you read a lot of Chinese literature, there has always been very strong women figures - warriors, swordswomen - who defended honor and loyalty with the men. So, it's not new to our culture - it's always been very much a part of it. It's good that now the Western audience would have a different image of the Chinese women. ~ Michelle Yeoh

Magic realism - somebody used that phrase the other day that is familiar with South American literature. That rang a bell. It resonates with me. ~ Sam Neill

Again, a conversation with the doctor. We always come back to the same point: "The church may not mix in politics." he says. And I tell him that when you are a Christian and profess that God is almighty, there is no single area of life from which you can eliminate God. -From the diary of Diet Eman ~ Diet Eman

I arrived from Harvard, where I had studied philosophy and the history of ideas, with a bias toward literature and formal thought. ~ Robert Darnton

Progress is measured by richness and intensity of experience - by a wider and deeper apprehension of the significance and scope of human existence. ~ Herbert Read

The road to heaven isn't much of a road," he was saying. "It's more like a dusty trail, roughly cut out through the underbrush. Most people don't even notice it. It doesn't look like a path at all, so they walk right by. Others see it, but don't go down it because it's ugly. Dirty. Difficult. Overgrown. If they took the road to heaven, their progress would be slow, maybe immeasurable. They'd have to give up a lot because the path is narrow. ~ Bonnie Grove

[Vathek] has, in parts, been called, but to some judgments, never is, dull: it is certainly in parts, grotesque, extravagant and even nasty. But Beckford could plead sufficient "local colour" for it, and a contrast, again almost Shakespearean, between the flickering farce atrocities of the beginning and the sombre magnificence of the end. Beckford's claims, in fact, rest on the half-score or even half-dozen pages towards the end: but these pages are hard to parallel in the later literature of prose fiction. ~ William Thomas Beckford

If giving up is to fail, then to hell with give up! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

There seemed no reason why she shouldn't try writing something in between, but she was discovering once again that reading and writing were not the same - you couldn't just soak it up and then squeeze it out again. ~ David Nicholls

More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us. ~ George Eliot

If children haven't been read to, they don't love books. They need to love books, for books are the basis of literature, composition, history, world events, vocabulary, and everything else. ~ Edith Schaeffer

You're just jealous because I have conquered world of literature, as well as science. ~ Katie Kennedy

The Winter Woman is as wild as a blizzard, as fresh as new snow. While some see her as cold, she has a fiery heart under that ice-queen exterior. She likes the stark simplicity of Japanese art and the daring complexity of Russian literature. She prefers sharp to flowing lines, brooding to pouting, and rock and roll to country and western. Her drink is vodka, her car is German, her analgesic is Advil. The Winter Woman likes her men weak and her coffee strong. She is prone to anemia, hysteria, and suicide. ~ Christopher Moore

In Jefferson's mind democracy was tantamount to extreme individualism. ~ Herbert Croly

Little by litter life returned to normal. The barbed wire which fenced us in did not cause us any real fear. We even thought ourselves rather well off; we were entirely self-contained. A little Jewish republic ... We appointed a Jewish Council, a Jewish police, an office for social assistance, a labor committee, a hygiene department - a whole government machinery.
Everyone marveled at it. We should no longer have before our eyes those hostile faces, those hate-laden stares. Our fear and anguish were at an end. We were living among Jews, among brothers. ~ Elie Wiesel

Rather than literally burning the midnight oil, which he judged to be unhealthy, John Adams advised his son to make the most of college by developing an inquisitive outlook that would prompt him to get to know the most exceptional scholars and question them closely. Ask them about their tutors, manner of teaching. Observe what books lie on their tables. Fall into questions of literature, science, or what you will. ~ David McCullough

Literature is, to my mind, the great teaching power of the world, the ultimate creator of all values, and it is this, not only in the sacred books whose power everybody acknowledges, but by every movement of imagination in song or story or drama that height of intensity and sincerity has made literature at all. Literature must take the responsibility of its power, and keep all its freedom: it must be like the spirit and like the wind that blows where it listeth; it must claim its right to pierce through every crevice of human nature, and to descrive the relation of the soul and the heart to the facts of life and of law, and to describe that relation as it is, not as we would have it be ... ~ W.B.Yeats

Wake up, my darling, and look at me," said Valentine with her adorable smile.
Maximilien uttered a loud exclamation, and frantic, doubtful, dazzled, as though by a celestial vision, he fell upon his knees.

-www.online-literature.com/dumas/crist... ~ Alexandre Dumas

She slowly rolled the book over in her hands, memorizing the cover as she said goodbye. She flipped through the pages, feeling the air on her face and breathing in the smell of the paper. ~ Sage Steadman

Well, the thing about great fictional characters from literature, and the reason that they're constantly turned into characters in movies, is that they completely speak to what makes people human. ~ Keira Knightley

It was like being a prisoner on death row who survives month after month and becomes accustomed to the life, while he registers with an objective eye the horror of the new arrivals: registers it with the same numbness tha he brings to the murders and deaths themselves. All survivor literature talks about this numbness, in which life's functions are reduced to minimum, behavior becomes completely selfish and indifferent to others, and gassing and burning are everyday occurences. In the rare accounts by perpetrators , too, the gas chambers and ovens become ordinary scenary, the perpetrators reduced to their few functions and exhibiting a mental paralysis and indifference, a dullness that makes them seem drugged or drunk. ~ Bernhard Schlink

Readers acquainted with the recent literature on human sexuality will be familiar with what we call the standard narrative of human sexual evolution, hereafter shortened to the standard narrative. It goes something like this:

1. Boy Meets girl,

2. Boy and girl assess one and others mate value, from perspectives based upon their differing reproductive agendas/capacities. He looks for signs of youth, fertility, health, absence of previous sexual experience and likelihood of future sexual fidelity. In other words, his assessment is skewed toward finding a fertile, healthy young mate with many childbearing years ahead and no current children to drain his resources.

She looks for signs of wealth (or at least prospects of future wealth), social status, physical health and likelihood that he will stick around to protect and provide for their children. Her guy must be willing and able to provide materially for her (especially during pregnancy and breastfeeding) and their children, known as "male parental investment".

3. Boy gets girl. Assuming they meet one and others criteria, they mate, forming a long term pair bond, "the fundamental condition of the human species" as famed author Desmond Morris put it. Once the pair bond is formed, she will be sensitive to indications that he is considering leaving, vigilant towards signs of infidelity involving intimacy with other women that would threaten her access to his resources and protection w ~ Cacilda Jetha

Medicine is my life, but literature is my mistress, and mysteries and poetry are my drugs of choice. ~ John A. Vanek

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow. ~ Anais Nin

So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot. ~ George Orwell

Wouldn't want to write the X-Men, and I suppose the X-Men is the ultimate Marvel comic, and I really wouldn't want to go anywhere near it at all, although on the other had I wouldn't mind having a crack at something like the Punisher. ~ Garth Ennis

Once
God wrote a story
that shook the heaven to the very core.
Love was the only language used;
You and I
were the only characters. ~ Subhan Zein

How easy it is to judge rightly after one sees what evil comes from judging wrongly. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

It's politely assumed that democracy is a means of containing and restraining violence. But violence comes not from genes but from ideas. ~ Edward Bond

All European writers are 'slaves of their baptism,' if I may paraphrase Rimbaud; like it or not, their writing carries baggage from an immense and almost frightening tradition; they accept that tradition or they fight against it, it inhabits them, it is their familiar and their succubus. Why write, if everything has, in a way, already been said? Gide observed sardonically that since nobody listened, everything has to be said again, yet a suspicion of guilt and superfluity leads the European intellectual to the most extreme refinements of his trade and tools, the only way to avoid paths too much traveled. Thus the enthusiasm that greets novelties, the uproar when a writer has succeeded in giving substance to a new slice of the invisible; merely recall symbolism, surrealism, the 'nouveau roman': finally something truly new that neither Ronsard, nor Stendahl , nor Proust imagined. For a moment we can put aside our guilt; even the epigones begin too believe they are doing something new. Afterwards, slowly, they begin to feel European again and each writer still has his albatross around his neck. ~ Julio Cortazar

When you read the psychedelic literature, there is a distinction between the so-called natural psychedelics and synthetic psychedelics that are artificially produced. ~ Stanislav Grof

Fiction is the only way to redeem the formlessness of life ~ Martin Amis

I am an invisible man. No I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe: Nor am I one of your Hollywood movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids, and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, simply because people refuse to see me. ~ Ralph Ellison

The Correspondence-School Instructor Says Goodbye to His Poetry Students

Goodbye, lady in Bangor, who sent me
snapshots of yourself, after definitely hinting
you were beautiful; goodbye,
Miami Beach urologist, who enclosed plain
brown envelopes for the return of your very
"Clinical Sonnets"; goodbye, manufacturer
of brassieres on the Coast, whose eclogues
give the fullest treatment in literature yet
to the sagging breast motif; goodbye, you in San Quentin,
who wrote, "Being German my hero is Hitler,"
instead of "Sincerely yours," at the end of long,
neat-scripted letters extolling the Pre-Raphaelites:

I swear to you, it was just my way
of cheering myself up, as I licked
the stamped, self-addressed envelopes,
the game I had of trying to guess
which one of you, this time,
had poisoned his glue. I did care.
I did read each poem entire.
I did say everything I thought
in the mildest words I knew. And now,
in this poem, or chopped prose, no better,
I realize, than those troubled lines
I kept sending back to you,
I have to say I am relieved it is over:
at the end I could feel only pity
for that urge toward more life
your poems kept smothering in words, the smell
of which, days later, tingled in your nostrils
as new, God-given impulses
to write.

Goodbye,
you who are, for me, the postmar ~ Galway Kinnell

All of a sudden their husband's dead and maybe a child is dead and they have absolutely nothing - and they're heading through the desert at night. ~ Nicholas D. Kristof

Some argue the days of furthering or bettering oneself through a liberl arts education are gone, but that's true only if "furthering and bettering" means "making more money" ... For many life reveals itself more intimately in literature than in ledgers. ~ Gina Barreca

Outside theology and fantastic literature, few can doubt that the main features of our universe are its dearth of meaning and lack of discernible purpose. And yet, with bewildering optimism, we continue to assemble whatever scraps of information we can gather in scrolls and books and computer chips, on shelf after library shelf, whether material, virtual or otherwise, pathetically intent on lending the world a semblance of sense and order, while knowing perfectly well that, however much we'd like to believe the contrary, our pursuits are sadly doomed to failure. ~ Alberto Manguel

That's why I've just gone on … collecting this particular kind of stuff – what you might call riff-raff. There's not a book here, Lawford, that hasn't at least a glimmer of the real thing in it – just Life, seen through a living eye, and felt. As for literature, and style, and all that gallimaufry, don't fear for them if your author has the ghost of a hint of genius in his making. ~ Walter De La Mare