Night, by Elie Wiesel, is a work of Holocaust literature, although it has a decidedly autobiographical slant. Wiesel based the book–at least in part–on his own experiences during World War II. The book has received considerable acclaim, and the author received the Nobel Prize in 1986. Here are a few quotes from Wiesel’s famous novel.
- “What can we expect? It’s war…”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 1 - “I wanted to come back to Sighet to tell you the story of my death. So that you could prepare yourselves while there was still time. To live? I don’t attach any importance to my life any more. I’m alone. No, I wanted to come back, and to warn you. And see how it is, no one will listen to me.”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 1 - “The yellow star? Oh well, what of it? You don’t die of it.”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 1 - “A prolonged whistle split the air. The wheels began to grind. We were on our way.”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 1 - “The doors were nailed up; the way back was finally cut off. The world was a cattle wagon hermetically sealed.”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 2 - “Men to the left! Women to the right!
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 3 - “Eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion. Eight short, simple words. Yet that was the moment when I parted from my mother.”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 3 - “Do you see that chimney over there? See it? Do you see those flames? (Yes, we did see the flames.) Over there-that’s where you’re going to be taken. That’s your grave, over there.”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 3 - “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed.”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 3 - “Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 3 - “The night was gone. The morning star was shining in the sky. I too had become a completely different person. The student of the Talmud, the child that I was, had been consumed in the flames. There remained only a shape that looked like me. A dark flame had entered into my soul and devoured it.”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 3 - “I did not deny God’s existence, but I doubted His absolute justice.”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 3 - “I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time.”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 4 - “Keep your anger and hatred for another day, for later on. The day will come, but not now.”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 4 - “I was thinking of my father. He must have suffered more than I did.”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 4 - “If it could only have lasted ten times ten hours!”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 4 - “Where is He? Here He is–He is hanging here on this gallows.”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 4 - “Whose was that tear? Mine? His?”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 5 - “Whenever I dreamed of a better world, I could only imagine a universe with no bells.”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 5 - “I’ve got more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He’s the only one who’s kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 5 - “Yet another last night. The last night at home, the last night in the ghetto, the last night in the train, and, now, the last night in Buna. How much longer were our lives to be dragged out from one ‘last night’ to another?”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 5 - “We were masters of nature, masters of the world. We had forgotten everything–death, fatigue, our natural needs. Stronger than cold or hunger, stronger than the shots and the desire to die, condemned and wandering, mere numbers, we were the only men on earth.”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 6 - “I shall always remember that smile. From which world did it come?”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 6 - “How could I forget that concert, given to an audience of dying and dead men!”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 6 - “When they withdrew, next to me were two corpses, side by side, the father and the son. I was fifteen years old.”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 7 - “We were all going to die here. All limits had been passed. No one had any strength left. And again the night would be long.”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 7 - “I probably brought him more satisfaction than I had done during my whole childhood.”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 8 - “But I had no more tears. And, in the depths of my being, in the recesses of my weakened conscience, could I have searched it, I might perhaps have found something like-free at last!”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 8 - “After my father’s death, nothing could touch me any more.”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 9 - “From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.”
– Elie Wiesel, Night, Ch. 9
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