I do not recall a Jewish home without a book on the table.

— Elie Wiesel

I don't know much about politics, and I don't want to know. That's why I rarely involve myself in politics.

— Elie Wiesel

If I had spoken to him out loud, he would have understood the tragic fate of those who came back, left over, living dead. You must look at them carefully. Their appearance is deceptive. They are smugglers. They look like the others. Furthermore, they eat, they laugh, they love. The seek money, fame, love. Like the other. But it isn't true; they are playing, sometimes without even knowing it. Anyone who has seen what THEY have seen cannot be like the others, cannot laugh, love, pray, bargain, suffer, have fun, or forget. Like the others. You have to watch them carefully when they pass by an innocent-looking smokestack, or when they lift a piece of bread to their mouths. Something in them shudders and makes you turn your eyes away. These people have been amputated; they haven't lost their legs or eyes, but their will and their taste for life. The things they have seen will come to the surface again sooner or later. And then the world will be frightened and won't dare look these spiritual cripples in the eye.

— Elie Wiesel

If life is not a celebration, why remember it ? If life --- mine or that of my fellow man --- is not an offering to the other, what are we doing on this earth?

— Elie Wiesel

If the only prayer you say throughout your life is "Thank You," then that will be enough.

— Elie Wiesel

I had many things to say, I did not have the words to say them. Painfully aware of my limitations, I watched helplessly and language became an obstacle. It became clear that it would be necessary to invent a new language... I would pause at every sentence, and start over and over again. I would conjure up other verbs, other images, other silent cries. It still was not right. But what exactly was “it”? “It” was something elusive, darkly shrouded for fear of being usurped, profaned. All the dictionary had to offer seemed meager, pale, lifeless.

— Elie Wiesel

I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I've been closer to him for that reason.

— Elie Wiesel

I marvel at the resilience of the Jewish people. Their best characteristic is their desire to remember. No other people have such an obsession with memory.

— 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.

— Elie Wiesel

In any society, fanatics who hate don't hate only me - they hate you, too. They hate everybody.

— Elie Wiesel