novelists-from-romania

"So it is that bird and man, Sun and moon Are born and die in Brahma the Sacred– Where all things become one."

"The love is happiness to be only a rotting cloth in the wound of a stranger."

"And I understood that not only was I fated to see them again, searching for each other with the same looks which clearly showed that love’s fiery sphere had started to grow between them, but there was also something else, meant only for me. Without wanting to, I had entered the realm of shadows, where you cannot be seen. They were the only ones that could be seen, while I, until then at the centre of the story, was now drifting through the treacherous fog of strange desires, like a poor fly blown about in the wind."

"The freedom is a tear digging into the flesh."

"For in any person there is a ball of bitterness and desire, sometimes just lightly tickling like a butterfly, but in many other cases utterly unbearable, like hot coals that scorch everything around them."

"Generous people are praised in books, but in everyday life they have nothing to show for it. The more grasping a person is, the wider doors open for them. No one loves the generous! They are admired for their praiseworthy deeds, and if they give you something, you accept it gratefully. But that’s as far as it goes. You don’t waste your time with a giver. You don’t go for a drink with them. You don’t make a philosophy of their gesture. And you don’t include them in your list of friends. Such a person is only good as a guarantor—the one who’s ready to stump up."

"Last year, sometime in November, I noticed a book in the window of the Sadoveanu"

"At last, she can sit down with the same emotion and anticipation felt before each meeting. The bed squeaks, recognizes her, and is happy to touch her. It is the only one that truly knows her, that deciphers the volutes of her brain and understands the delicate movements of the tiny creatures hidden in her capillaries. It took her 62 days to get here, to slide her fingers along its wooden surface, 62 suffocating days, the memories of which, although will fade, will leave toxins behind."

"Once he had turned the steak onto the other side, the madness began, as in a soul in love. Everything that followed after that, the salads, garnishes, and other accompaniments to the steak, was turned into the love letters, bouquets of flowers, and serenades by which men signal their desires and transmit news about the flow of their blood."

"The Book of Perilous Dishes"

"The agarwood gave off its perfume, and the vine oil clouded over, invaded by the ghosts of other lives, from the time when it was just a dry seed under heaps of limestone. The knife, the same knife that I had gripped in my hands without feeling its hidden power, that had sent Dubois to Marseille, sparked by the unseen veins that still bound it to Chelyabinsk, had begun to do its work."

"The fool that saith in his heart there is no God is the city fool to whom nothing is wonderful any more: and those who do not know wonder do not know God."

"We Jews, we, the destroyers, will remain the destroyers for ever. Nothing that you do will meet our needs and demands. We will destroy because we need a world of our own, a God-world, which it is not in your nature to build. Beyond all temporary alliances with this or that action lies the ultimate split in nature and destiny, the enmity between the Game and God."

"In everything we are destroyers—even in the instruments of destruction to which we turn for relief. The very socialism and internationalism through which our choked spirit seeks utterance, which seem to threaten your way of life, are alien to our spirit's demands and needs. Your socialists and internationalists are not serious. The charm of these movements, the attraction, such as it is, which they exercise, is only in their struggle: it is the fight which draws your gentile radicals."

"The thinking man needs no scientist to teach him the wonder of creation: he needs neither a telescope nor a microscope in order to see God; nor do formulae teach him the nature of God. Life itself, being, the staggering wonder of mere existence, fills completely, crams beyond all possibility of addition, the faculty of astonishment and bewilderment in the sensitive man. Those to whom existence has become commonplace by familiarity—or who have never been smitten prostrate by the riddle of existence—need a crescendo succession of "shockers" to touch their brutish minds. They didn't know the marvel of the universe until they learned of electricity; but now that electricity is as commonplace as sunlight, they need a theory of relativity; and when that is played out as an advertising stunt for the ingenuity of the Almighty, they will need something else."

"No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them."

"From time immemorial, people have talked about peace without achieving it. Do we simply lack enough experience? Though we talk peace, we wage war. Sometimes we even wage war in the name of peace. . . . War may be too much a part of history to be eliminated—ever."

"I rarely speak about God. To God yes. I protest against Him. I shout at Him. But open discourse about the qualities of God, about the problems that God imposes, theodicy, no. And yet He is there, in silence, in filigree."

"Whenever an angel says "Be not afraid!" you'd better start worrying. A big assignment is on the way."

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference. Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies. To be in the window and watch people being sent to concentration camps or being attacked in the street and do nothing, that's being dead."

"Miracles in mysticism don't occupy such an important place. It's metaphor, for the peasants, for the crowds, to impress people. What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It's close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically. You plunge into it. Philosophy is a slow process of logic and logical discourse: A bringing B bringing C and so forth. In mysticism you can jump from A to Z. But the ultimate objective is the same. It's knowledge. It's truth."

"Time does not heal all wounds; there are those that remain painfully open."

"In Jewish history there are no coincidences."

"I believe mysticism is a very serious endeavor. One must be equipped for it. One doesn't study calculus before studying arithmetic. In my tradition, one must wait until one has learned a lot of Bible and Talmud and the Prophets to handle mysticism. This isn't instant coffee. There is no instant mysticism."

"The most important question a human being has to face... What is it? The question, Why are we here?"

"It's up to you now, and we shall help you — that my past does not become your future."

"When a Jew visits Jerusalem for the first time, it is not the first time; it is a homecoming."

"There are victories of the soul and spirit. Sometimes, even if you lose, you win."

"The greatest commandment to me in the Bible is not the Ten Commandments. (First of all, it’s too difficult to observe; second, we all pretend to observe.) My commandment is ‘Thou shall not stand idly by.’ Which means, when you witness an injustice: Don’t stand idly by. When you hear of a person or a group being persecuted: Do not stand idly by. When there is something wrong with the community around you or far away: Do not stand idly by. You must intervene. You must interfere. And that is actually the motto of human rights."

"Once you label a people "illegal", that is exactly what the Nazis did to Jews. You do not label a people "illegal." They have committed an illegal act. They are immigrants who crossed illegally. They are immigrants who crossed without papers. They are immigrants who crossed without permission. They are living in this country without permission. But they are not an illegal people."

"I had anger but never hate. Before the war, I was too busy studying to hate. After the war, I thought, What's the use? To hate would be to reduce myself."

"For me, every hour is grace. And I feel gratitude in my heart each time I can meet someone and look at his or her smile."

"Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil."

"When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude."

"What is abnormal is that I am normal. That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life — that is what is abnormal."

"What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor but the silence of the bystander."

"What I don't like today is, to put it coarsely, the phony Hasidism, the phony mysticism. Many students say, "Teach me mysticism." It's a joke."

""Faster! Faster! Move, you lazy good-for-nothings!" the Hungarian police were screaming. That was when I began to hate them, and my hatred remains our only link today. They were our first oppressors. They were the first faces of hell and death."

"No one was praying for the night to pass quickly. The stars were but sparks of the immense conflagration that was consuming us. Were this conflagration to be extinguished one day, nothing would be left in the sky but extinct stars and unseeing eyes."

"The Hungarian lieutenant went around with a basket and retrieved the last possessions from those who chose not to go on tasting the bitterness of fear. "There are eighty of you in the car," the German officer added. "If anyone goes missing, you will all be shot, like dogs." The two disappeared. The doors clanked shut. We had fallen into the trap, up to our necks. The doors were nailed, the way back irrevocably cut off. The world had become a hermetically sealed cattle car."

"The beloved objects that we had carried with us from place to place were now left behind in the wagon and, with them, finally, our illusions."

"An SS came toward us wielding a club. He commanded: "Men to the left! Women to the right!" Eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion. Eight simple, short words. Yet that was the moment when I left my mother. There was no time to think, and I already felt my father's hand press against mine: we were alone."

"The world? The world is not interested in us. Today, everything is possible, even the crematoria..."

""Yisgadal, veyiskadash, shmey raba...May His name be celebrated and sanctified..." whispered my father. For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?"

"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never."

"The absent no longer entered our thoughts. One spoke of them who knows what happened to them? but their fate was not on our minds. We were incapable of thinking. Our senses were numbed, everything was fading into a fog. We no longer clung to anything. The instincts of self-preservation, of self-defense, of pride, had all deserted us. In one terrifying moment of lucidity, I thought of us as damned souls wandering through the void, souls condemned to wander through space until the end of time, seeking redemption, seeking oblivion, without any hope of finding either."

"The night had passed completely. The morning star shone in the sky. I too had become a different person. The student of Talmud, the child I was, had been consumed by the flames. All that was left was a shape that resembled me. My soul had been invaded - and devoured - by a black flame."

""For God's sake, where is God?" And from within me, I heard a voice answer: "Where He is? This is where hanging here from this gallows..." That night, the soup tasted of corpses."

"Yes, man is stronger, greater than God. When Adam and Eve deceived You, You chased them from paradise. When You were displeased by Noah's generation, You brought down the Flood. When Sodom lost Your favor, You caused the heavens to rain down fire and damnation. But look at these men whom You have betrayed, allowing them to be tortured, slaughtered, gassed, and burned, what do they do? They pray before You! They praise Your name!"

"The street resembled fairgrounds deserted in haste. There was a little of everything: suitcases, briefcases, bags, knives, dishes, banknotes, papers, faded portraits. All the things one planned to take along and finally left behind. They had ceased to matter. Open rooms everywhere. Gaping doors and windows looked out into the void. It all belonged to everyone since it no longer belonged to anyone. It was there for the taking. An open tomb."