Quotes from Thomas Keneally

Now, even if he and Dr B made their decision, D didn't know if he had the rigour to feed the cyanide to the ill, or to watch someone else do it and maintain a professional disposition. It was absurdley like the argument in one's youth, about whether you should approach a girl you were infatuated with. And when you'd decide, it still counted for nothing. The act still had to be faced.

Herr Bosch was purple nosed; the oxygen which by rights belonged to the veins of his face had for years gone to feed the sharp blue flame of all that liquor.

From November 1st, said Hans Frank, it would be possible for the Germans of Cracow to breathe 'good German air', to walk abroad without seeing the streets and lanes 'crawling with Jews'.

you were making them promises about a future. And would not such promises constitute, in anyone's code, a true cruelty?

The more orthodox of the ghetto had a slogan - 'An hour of life is still life'.

That was travel, she supposed. A dance across surfaces to see the face of everything and learn the meaning of very little.

Blancke's concept of health was as eccentric as that of any doctor in the SS. He had rid the prison clinic of the chronically ill by injecting benzine into their bloodstreams. These injections could not by anyone's definition be called mercy killings. The patient was seized by convulsions which ended in a choking death after a quarter of an hour.

Coitus is random, children are definite.

Principle is principle, of course, and terror on a gray morning is another thing.

Era un vers din Talmud: "Cel care salveaz? o singur? via??, salveaz? întreaga lume.

All right, Herr Stern, if God made man in His image, which race is most like him? Is a Pole more like him than a Czech?

There were many indications from history, Frank proposed, that threatened races generally outbred the genocides. The phallus was faster than the gun.

To the memory of Oskar Schindler, and to Leopold Pfefferberg who by zeal and persistence caused this book to be written.

But re-reading Voss also demonstrates again that although White wasn't 'a nice man', and indeed was—perhaps rightly—scathingly dismissive of my and other Australian writers' work and origins unless they were his friends, he was a genius, and Voss one of the finest works of the modernist era and of the past century.

Oskar has made it his business to know the full face of the system, the rabid face behind the veil of bureaucratic decency.

It was the first time Oskar had seen this juxtaposition of humans and cattle cars, and it was a greater shock than hearing of it.

No te mates, Clara —dijo—. Si lo haces, nunca sabrás el final.

As Wulkan entered the mess with his wrenches, he saw above the door the inscription, Für Juden und Hunde Eintritt Verboten - Entrance forbidden to Jews and dogs.

In the mind of a true snob there are certain limited criteria to denote the value of human existence. Jimmie's criteria were: home, hearth, wife, land. Those who possessed these had beatitude unchallengable. Other men had accidental, random life. Nothing better.

Lower ways of life give way to higher.

The truest crime remaining to him to commit was the waste of love. It should be bequeathed, as land is.

Herzog and Grüner, Wulkan and Friedner commenced to grade again, aware now of course of the radiant value of whatever gold they themselves carried in their mouths, fearful that the SS would come prospecting for it.

He was Sudeten German—Arkansas to their Manhattan, Liverpool to their Cambridge.

he who saves the life of one man saves the entire world.