“I had not been left behind in the parish. I wasn't holding the hands of grieving widows. I wasn't struggling to educate my children. I was pontificating on the great issues of the day in the comfort of a privileged lifestyle.”

“I finally understood what my grandmother meant. If I wasn't comfortable with myself, I would never be comfortable.”

“When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn't ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted. I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either.”

“My hands are clean, but not because I wasn't prepared to bloody them.”

“If I wasn't writing poems, I'd be washing my hands all the time.”

“I opened the door and blinked out into the bright hall. I had the impression it wasn't night and it wasn't day, but some lurid third interval that had suddenly slipped between them and would never end.”

“If we had killed 10.3 million Jews, then I would have been satisfied and would say, good, we annihilated an enemy. … I wasn't only issued orders, in this case I'd have been a moron, but I rather anticipated, I was an idealist.”

“I was deeply grieved and suddenly depleted by a draining weariness. This day had been a nightmare, and I had not yet been asleep.”

“Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realised that the imagery in my mind wasn't insanity. Surrealism to me is reality.”

“My earliest memory is of feeling different. My parents told me that I wasn't like other children.”