Jonathan Littell Quotes

#1. This path is very rarely the result of any choice, or even of personal predilection. The victims, in the vast majority of cases, were not tortured or killed because they were good any more than their executioners tormented them because they were evil. It

Jonathan Littell

#2. Both deaths were equally vain, neither of them shortened the war by so much as a second; but in both cases, the man or men who killed them believed it was just and necessary; and if they were wrong, who's to blame? What

Jonathan Littell

#3. So who is guilty? Everyone, or no one? Why should the worker assigned to the gas chamber be guiltier than the worker assigned to the boilers, the garden, the vehicles? The

Jonathan Littell

#4. I have remained someone who believes that the only things indispensable to human life are air, food, drink and excretion, and the search for truth. The rest is optional.

Jonathan Littell

#5. If you ever managed to make me cry, my tears would sear your face.

Jonathan Littell

#6. Your first time?" the Hauptman gently asked. I nodded. "You'll get used to it," he went on, "but maybe never completely." He

Jonathan Littell

#7. So what's the most atrocious thing you've seen?" He waved his hand: "Man, of course!

Jonathan Littell

#8. Please, mein Herr, shoot the children cleanly.

Jonathan Littell

#9. Like translation itself, Asymptote is a fluid web reaching out to all sides, bringing texts and readers together, through the most improbable and marvelous of connections.

Jonathan Littell

#10. There were always reasons for what I did. Good reasons or bad reasons, I don't know, in any case human reasons. Those who kill are humans, just like those who are killed, that's what's terrible. You

Jonathan Littell

#11. Blood transmits a propensity for heart diseases; if it also transmits a propensity for treason, no one has ever been able to prove it.

Jonathan Littell