Quotes from Elie Wiesel

The opposite of education is not ignorance but 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.

I try to see their moral relevance [in the Bible] and, of course, to admire the literary beauty of the text. Prophetic poetry: No one has written the way Isaiah does.

In the concentration camps, we discovered this whole universe where everyone had his place. The killer came to kill, and the victims came to die.

I come from a tradition - from the Jewish tradition, which believes in words, in language, in communication.

When language fails, violence becomes a language; I never had that feeling.

No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions.

When I was young I lost everything.

I do not deal with the text [of the Bible] scientifically. I read it, I'm interested in its layers of meaning, but my relation to it is much more an emotional one.

My anger rises up within faith and not outside it.

If there is a single theme that dominates all my writings, all my obsessions, it is that of memory-because I fear forgetfulness as much as hatred and death.