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"Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair."
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"I knew I was catching at straws; but in the wide and weltering deep where I found myself, I would have caught at cobwebs."

"We destroy ourselves when we are ignorant or decide to live in ignorance."

"Sometimes I could cope with the sullen despair that overwhelmed me: but sometimes the whirlwind passions of my soul drove me to seek, by bodily exercise and by change of place, some relief from my intolerable sensations. It was during an access of this kind that I suddenly left my home, and bending my steps towards the near Alpine valleys, sought in the magnificence, the eternity of such scenes, to forget myself and my ephemeral, because human, sorrows."

"It's despair at the lack of (I'm cheating, I didn't say all these things - but I'm going to write what I want to say as well as what I did) feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world."

"Where is my chance to be somebody's Peter Van Houten?' He hit the steering wheel weakly, the car honking as he cried. He leaned his head back, looking up. 'I hate myself I hate myself I hate this I hate this I disgust myself I hate it I hate it I hate it just let me fucking die."
Explore more quotes by Elie Wiesel

"I'm a teacher and a writer; my life is words. When I see the denigration of language, it hurts me, and it's easy to denigrate a word by trivializing it."

"We were masters of nature, masters of the world. We had forgotten everything--death, fatigue, our natural needs. Stronger than cold or hunger, stronger than the shots and the desire to die, condemned and wandering, mere numbers, we were the only men on earth."

"I needed to know that there was such a thing as love and that it brought smiles and joy in its wake."

"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."

"Look, if I were alone in the world, I would have the right to choose despair, solitude and self-fulfillment. But I am not alone."

"My faceless neighbor spoke up:'Don't be deluded. Hitler has made it clear that he will annihilate all Jews before the clock strikes twelve.I exploded:'What do you care what he said? Would you want us to consider him a prophet?His cold eyes stared at me. At last he said, wearily:'I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people."
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