“Stand back, leave me alone, submerged people,
Go away. I haven't dispossessed anyone,
Haven't usurped anyone's bread.
No one died in my place. No one.
Go back into your mist.
It's not my fault if I live and breathe,
Eat, drink, sleep and put on clothes.”

—  Primo Levi, book Collected Poems

"The Survivor" (1984)
Collected Poems (1984)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Stand back, leave me alone, submerged people, Go away. I haven't dispossessed anyone, Haven't usurped anyone's bread.…" by Primo Levi?
Primo Levi photo
Primo Levi44
Italian chemist, memoirist, short story writer, novelist, e… 1918–1987

Related quotes

Sarah Vowell photo

“I haven't decided if he deserved to eat bread made out of sticks or live in a rancid puddle, probably because I haven't made up my mind whether anyone deserves such treatment, though I suspect that the day a person gives up on the Geneva Conventions is the day a person gives up on the human race.”

Sarah Vowell book Assassination Vacation

Source: Assassination Vacation (2005), p. 81 On Samuel Mudd

Stephen Harper photo

“A transition is taking place in Egypt. In my judgement, there is no going back. I think the old expression, “They’re not going to put the toothpaste back in the tube on this one.””

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

CPAC, February 11, 2011, http://www.cpac.ca/forms/index.asp?dsp=template&act=view3&template_id=1383&hl=e.
2011

Bob Saget photo

“I've banged half the girls in this room, and that is fuckin' not true. I haven't banged anyone here. I've put my pinky in your butts, couple of you.”

Bob Saget (1956) American stand-up comedian, actor and television host

Bob Saget: That Ain't Right (2007)

Evelyn Waugh photo

“I haven't been to sleep for over a year. That's why I go to bed early. One needs more rest if one doesn't sleep.”

Evelyn Waugh book Decline and Fall

Decline and Fall (1928)

Robert Frost photo

“The nearest friends can go
With anyone to death, comes so far short
They might as well not try to go at all.
No, from the time when one is sick to death,
One is alone, and he dies more alone.
Friends make pretence of following to the grave,
But before one is in it, their minds are turned
And making the best of their way back to life
And living people, and things they understand.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

"Home Burial" (1914)
1910s

“They can't drop the charges without saying I haven't done anything wrong. And if they do that, I'm going to ask for my marijuana back.”

Brownie Mary (1922–1999) American medical cannabis activist

As quoted in Torgoff, Martin (2005). Can't Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age, 1945-2000. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0743230116. p. 443.

Ursula K. Le Guin photo

“I think," Tehanu said in her soft, strange voice, "that I when I die, I can breathe back the breath that made me live. I can give back to the world all that I didn't do. All that I might have been and couldn't be. All the choices I didn't make. All the things I lost and spent and wasted. I can give them back to the world. To the lives that haven't been lived yet. That will be my gift back to the world that gave me the life I did live, the love I lived, the breath I breathed.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, The Other Wind (2001), Chapter 5, “Rejoining” (p. 286)

River Phoenix photo

“No…Please don't go…No…Please don't leave yet
You haven't heard my band yet
You haven't seen my house
You cannot understand yet
What it means to be old
River run
River deep
River come, So I can sing you to sleep.”

River Phoenix (1970–1993) American actor, musician, and activist

River Run by Suddenly Tammy

Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo

“That book taught me that by reading, I could live more intensely. It could give me back the sight I had lost. For that reason alone, a book that didn't matter to anyone changed my life.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“You will eat this and go to sleep, so your pronouns get their antecedents back.”

Patricia Briggs book Frost Burned

Source: Frost Burned

Related topics