The Forgotten Quotes

“Buy me a drink. We'll drink to God, who created men in a drunken moment.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“Our sages teach us that two angels attach themselves to a man at birth and never leave him. One walks before and helps him climb mountains, the other follows in the shadows and pushes him toward his fall.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“Melt down the fat. Cut the cosmetics and coloratura. The classic rule of good journalism: honor the verb, sacrifice the adjective.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“You can't be serious. Your temple was destroyed two thousand years ago and you're grieving today?” Yes, as if it had happened only yesterday. “A lot of people have told me the Jews were crazy,” she said. “They were right.” Yes, we're crazy. “It's human nature to forget what hurts you, isn't it? Wasn't forgetfulness a gift of the gods to the ancient world? Without it, life would be intolerable, wouldn't it?” Yes, but the Jews live by other rules. For a Jew, nothing is more important than memory. He is bound to his origins by memory. It is memory that connects him to Abraham, Moses and Rabbi Akiba. If he denies memory he will have denied his own honor. “So you insist on keeping all your wounds open?” Those wounds exist; it is therefore forbidden and unhealthy to pretend that they don't.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“It is an admission of conflict and separation; these God creates and destroys, by His presence as much by His absence. All is possible with Him; nothing is possible without Him. But the opposite is equally true. Never forget what the ancient taught us: God exists in contradictions, too. He is the limit of all things, and He is what extends the limit.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“Forgetfulness was a worse scourge than madness: the sick man is not somewhere else; he is nowhere. He is not another, he is no one.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“Forgetfulness was for him the death not only of knowledge but also of imagination.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“Death alone is invisible. Man's end was the same everywhere.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“You heard me. I am the caretaker.”

“And what do you take care of?”

“What people throw away, what history rejects, what memory denies. The smile of a starving child, the tears of its dying mother. The silent prayers of the condemned man and the cries of his friend: I gather them up and preserve them. In this city, I am memory.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“Men are wrong to think that the blind cannot see. The truth is that they see, but differently. I would even say that they see something other.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“It's a laugh that comes from beyond happiness and sadness. From beyond faith and anger. It's a laugh that only the dead can appreciate.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“Wasn't forgetfulness a gift of the gods to the ancient world? Without it. Life would be intolerable, wouldn't it? Yes, but the Jews live by other rules. For a Jew, nothing is more important than memory. He is bound to his origins by memory. It is memory that connects him to Abraham, Moses and Rabbi Akiva.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“God does not create other people so we could turn our backs on them.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“To learn is to receive, and then it is to give, and then it is to give again.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“We're the only ones who know what death is all about. And the earth itself. Just let somebody try to muscle in on our work, and the earth will swallow him up like that, believe me. The earth is kind to us gravediggers. It doesn't complain, it lets itself be worked over. It accepts what we give it. It endures the assassin's arrogance and the victim's tears. It's open to everybody at any moment; the great conqueror is the earth, for it is the earth that raises the dead and feeds the living.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“Oh, to recover faith! And the innocence of before. To live in the moment, to hold desire and fulfillment in one's grasp, to fuse with someone else, with oneself; to become infinity”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“Only memory matters. Mine sometimes overflows. Because it harbours my father's memories, too, since his mind has become a sieve. No, not a sieve: an autumn leaf, dried, torn. No, a phantom which I see only at midnight. I know: one cannot see a memory. But I can. I see it as the shadow of a shadow which constantly withdraws and turns inward. I hardly glimpse it, and it vanishes in the abyss.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“Truth, my son, truth, truth must not die…. All else matters less. Take care to be truthful always…. Truthful with your friends, truthful with God, truthful with yourself…. Most of all, he said, most of all, at the hour of your death you must know that you have not helped to kill the truth…. Truth dies every time a man turns away from it….”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“Don't fight it, Tamar. Don't say no just for revenge; no more revenge. No more games. Let's take whatever comes along—the good and the less good alike—simply and in harmony. Despite pain and sorrow, we'll put our trust in what exalts us—my father’s relentless sufferings—and in what thwarts us, too—the ambiguities of life, most of all Jewish life in the diaspora. Will forge new links from which new sparks will rise. Spoken words will become signs, words unspoken will serve as warnings. And we'll invent the rest.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“I know: even the most eminent doctors are sometimes wrong. I sometimes wonder if the diagnosis is correct. I wonder if my father is suffering from amnesia or some other disease. He may know everything that's happening to him, everything said in his presence, everything going on around him and within him, and he may want to react, to respond, but he may be incapable of it. Or he may not want to. He may be disappointed in mankind. And in its language. He may reject our worn and devalued words. He may need others altogether. And as there are no others, he may be choosing to feign forgetfulness so that he can remain speechless.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“It's unfair, Malkiel thought. It's unfair for Israel to separate us while it should bring us closer. Help us, Father, as you have helped so many others.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“And you don't give a damn for Israel's welfare—admit it! You don't give a damn about their security—go on, admit it! All that matters to you is your scoop, and the boss's congratulations, and if that piece brought you a Pulitzer Prize you jump for joy, and if Israel had to suffer for it, what the hell! Do I overstate the case?”

“Yes, you overstate the case, damn right you overstate it! I love my work. I love it passionately, And not because of the rewards but because it's my weapon! I like to think that because of me men and women will be a little happier and their lives a little easier.”

“You worry about everybody in the world except your own brothers and sisters in Israel!”

“That's a lie!”

“Then prove it!”

“How do you want me to prove it? By concealing what happens there? By accepting Injustice there and passing over it in silence?”

“And the injustices perpetrated against Israel? You don't care about them? The terrorist raids? The assassination of children? The murder of innocent civilians?

“The paper we work for talks about them all the time, and often on the front page. Don't you think the Palestinians’ fate deserves a little attention too?”

“Ah, there it is—finally admitting it's the Palestinians you care about.”

“No. It's the truth I care about. And I love Israel as much as you do.”

“But you're prepared to do them harm and put them at risk.”

“No! I'm prepared to keep them from doing harm to themselves!”

“Oh, magnificent, Tamar! You're going to help Israel in spite of itself! Bravo!”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“Who are you and who am I to set ourselves up as judges of an ancient people, and furthermore our own?”

“Who are you and who am I not to help an ancient people, and furthermore our own, refrain from serious error? Their salvation may depend on it, and ours certainly does!”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“Did hope help us to survive, or not? Too many families clung to it all through the war, thus falling into the enemy's trap. But would they have survived without hope? Hope is sometimes unworthy of us, Tamar said, but despair is even worse if it kills the will to act, to confront events, to protest evil, to shout, No! We are not blind, we will not submit! If the absurd exists, we will respond. With reason or with more absurdity—but we'll respond.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“Two young people abandoned by a world thirsty for blood, fire and hatred. Two mouths seeking each other. Two hearts open to each other's pain. Two souls conversing, two memories calling, each to the other.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“Malkiel often considered telling his father about her. But Elhanan would have taken it badly. He would have cried “What? You, a Jew, with a Muslim woman? I'm sure she hates Israel….” And indeed she did. Leila, a future follower of the PLO, was already anti-Israel. Between her and Malkiel, argument followed endless and sometimes violent argument. Yes, yes, Israel has suffered, she would say; but does that give them the right to make Palestinians suffer?

Malkiel: You know very well it isn't Israel making them suffer! You can blame the Arab governments for their tragedy; why did they exhort them to flee their homes in 1948? And then let them live in refugee camps?

Leila: You Jews did all you could to uproot those people and drive them from their land, and now you blame the Arabs? If you hadn't come along, there would have been no tragedy!

He: We didn't come along, We came back. Easy enough for you to forget!

She: I'm not forgetting anything, but you forget that the Palestinians have been living on that land for centuries, and you abandoned it two thousand years ago!

Malkia lost his temper: Abandoned? You dare say we abandoned the land promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? And shown to Moses? And conquered by Joshua? Aren't you ashamed to falsify history? They expelled us from that land, but we never repudiated it, or forgot it, or abandoned it! Since King David there have always been Jews in Jerusalem, and Galilee, and Gaza.

She: Oh yes? And the big cities?

He: The big cities? Do you mean Haifa, Netanya and Tel Aviv? Do you want to tell me who built them? You, maybe? You were a smattering of people in the desert—do you dare deny that?

She: That's the Afrikaner argument in South Africa.

He: I forbid you to compare us to those racists and their apartheid! Racism and Judaism are incompatible! We suffered too much from racism to use it against others.

She: There you go again with your suffering! As if you were the only people who ever knew hardship!”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“Do you know,” he asked, “that the most common word in our Yom Kippur prayers doesn't relate to forgiveness, or expiation, but remembrance?”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“I admired my father not only for his kindness and intelligence, but also for his memory. He could quote long passages of the Talmud and Plato, the Zohar and the Upanishads. He could recall in rich detail his visit to the ghetto in Stanislav, his first skirmish as a partisan, his arrival in Palestine. He envied the character of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, who remembered what he had done in his mother's womb and even in his father's desire. Immersed in his own past and the world’s, my father was nevertheless a man of his times, reacting to all its convulsions. Politics stimulated him, and so did the international situation. Famine in Africa, racial persecution in Indonesia, religious conflict in Ireland and India: What men did to other men they did to him. When someone said that as a Jew he was wrong to care about anything but Israel, he answered angrily, “God did not create other people so we could turn our backs on them.” And yet he loved Israel with all his heart and soul. Why didn't he go back there to end his days? He did not know, and admitted that to me. “Maybe it's cowardice on my part. Maybe in Jerusalem every stone and every cloud would remind me of your mother; I'd be too unhappy.” Another time he told me, “I know it's convenient to love Israel from a distance. It's even a contradiction, but I'm not afraid of contradictions. In creating man in his own image, didn't God contradict Himself? Except that God is alone and free while man, still alone, is never free.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“Despite intrigues and feuds, camaraderie on a newspaper was unlike anything else. Anyone’s success was a credit to all. Any victory over injustice, won by reportage or an editorial, justified pride in the whole team. A newspaper was a living organism, pulsating with affection, determined to accept only truth. Of course there was often a gap between the ideal and reality. There were compromises, deals, someone was always passing the buck; all that was normal. But your eyes—at least at the beginning—were on the heights, even if they were unattainable. Even if you had to begin the climb again everyday.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten

“In his moments of lucidity, which would later become increasingly rare and painful, he suggested an explanation of what was happening to him: “I am a guilty man. That is why I am being punished like Abuya's heretical sons, I gazed when I should not have gazed and turned my eyes away when I should not have. I saw a sin committed… a crime…I could have, I should have, done something, called out, shouted, struck a blow. I forgot our precepts, our laws, that require an individual to struggle against evil wherever it appears. I forgot that we can never simply remain spectators, we have no right to stand aside, to keep silent, to let the victim fight the aggressor alone. I forgot so many things that day…That is why I am forgetting other things now. Can there be anything worse than that?”

Yes, there was worse, there is worse: to forget that one has forgotten.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten