“I beg the reader not to go in search of messages. It is a term that I detest because it distresses me greatly, for it forces on me clothes that are not mine, which in fact belong to a human type that I distrust; the prophet, the soothsayer, the seer. I am none of these; I'm a normal man with a good memory who fell into a maelstrom and got out of it more by luck than by virtue, and who from that time on has preserved a certain curiosity about maelstroms large and small, metaphorical and actual.” MenHumansFactsCertainForceTermMemoriesVirtueMinesTypeReaderNormalMessagesClothesLuckCuriosityProphetDistressDistrustGood MemoriesDetestMetaphoricalSeersMaelstrom Author:Primo Levi
“The trade of chemist (fortified, in my case, by the experience of Auschwitz), teaches you to overcome, indeed to ignore, certain revulsions that are neither necessary or congenital: matter is matter, neither noble nor vile, infinitely transformable, and its proximate origin is of no importance whatsoever. Nitrogen is nitrogen, it passes miraculously from the air into plants, from these into animals, and from animals into us; when its function in our body is exhausted, we eliminate it, but it still remains nitrogen, aseptic, innocent.” StillsMatterBodyCertainAnimalTeachCasesAirOvercomingFunctionImportanceRemainsTradePlantNobleInnocentExhaustedChemistAuschwitzRevulsionNitrogen Book:The periodic table Source: The periodic table
“This cell belongs to a brain, and it is my brain, the brain of me who is writing; and the cell in question, and within it the atom in question, is in charge of my writing, in a gigantic minuscule game which nobody has yet described. It is that which at this instant, issuing out of a labyrinthine tangle of yeses and nos, makes my hand run along a certain path on the paper, mark it with these volutes that are signs: a double snap, up and down, between two levels of energy, guides this hand of mine to impress on the paper this dot, here, this one.” WritingTwoHandsRunningCertainGamesEnergyLevelsBrainPathMinesPaperMarkGuidesCellsInstantAtomsImpressUp And DownSnapsDots Author:Primo Levi
“Even in this place one can survive, and therefore one must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness; and that to survive we must force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of civilization. We are slaves, deprived of every right, exposed to every insult, condemned to certain death, but we still possess one power, and we must defend it with all our strength for it is the last — the power to refuse our consent.” WantStillsStoriesLastsFormCertainForceBearsCivilizationSlaveRefuseWitnessInsultExposedConsentDeprivedSkeletonsScaffoldingCertain Death Book:Survival In Auschwitz Source: Survival In Auschwitz
