The Journal of Hélène Berr

Each of us in our own small sphere can do something. And we can, we must.

This book made me feel strangely awkward, because I'm afraid of finding my own story in it. I take books too seriously.

It's a wonderful, inspiring feeling to have real friends who love and understand you. I have never had that feeling before.

There is beauty in the midst of tragedy. As if beauty were condensing in the heart of ugliness. It's very strange.

What will become of me? I do not know where am I going or what tomorrow will bring.

I really don't know what's happened to me, but I have changed from top to toe. I am living in a strange mixture of memories of yesterday and today.

What people need in order to write is an observant spirit and a broad mind.

The impression that what is extraordinary is real, and that the real is the extraordinary.

Now that everybody thinks he looks a little Slavic, it annoys me. I don't want that to be the reason I find him charming. I found him charming for no reason, because he is who he is.

There can be no deeper despair, no pain less easy to assuage, than losing a husband when you are young.

It seemed to me that I was suddenly in the presence of incosolable, unavoidable, and immense pain. The thought of that death hunted me and turned everything else into nothing.

...For I do now know that it is cowardly. We do not have the right to think only of poetry on this earth. It is magical, but utterly selfish.

And then there is pride. I do not want any part of it. The idea that you can write for other people, so as to be praised by them, horrifies me. Maybe there is also the feeling that "other people" won't understand you completely, that they make you dirty and mutilate you, and that you let yourself be cheapened like mere merchandise.