“When I planted my own little sapling and tightened the soil around it, black earth stuck to my fingers. ‘Will my sapling live?’ I asked myself.”

Before she died in Bergen Belsen, Anne Frank said, “Despite everything, I believe that people are, at heart, really good.”

“And it was said: / honor thy father and thy mother / and they will honor you with twice as much spanking / and with two good blows on the backside…”

“To really wake up, you have to blow on a mirror. That’s exactly what I was about to do when Death came in…”

“Abandoned dishes pile up in the sink, / and lines of ants wake up to resume their march across the floors…”

“And the heat that once was in me became a liquid that froze: / A dirty block of ice, / Halley’s Comet, / An evil omen, they said…”

“Once I was a Palaeolithic painter, a sensual hunter / plundering the earth, living from hand to mouth, / drawing at one end of the cave, all my worries ordinary.”

“Within minutes he would be sitting at the table drinking tea, eating whatever cake he was served, and smoking a cigarette.”