Rachela Muracka

“I told him: “I have been inside for two years and seven months. I have had a job to do here. Lately I have had no instructions. Now the Germans have shipped out our best people with whom I’ve been working. I would have to start from scratch. I can see no further point in staying here. Therefore, I’m going to leave.” Captain 159 [Stanisław Machowski] looked at me in some surprise and said: “Yes. I can see that, but can one pick and choose when one wants to come to Auschwitz and when one wants to leave?” I replied: “One can.”
― Witold Pilecki, The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery

“Those who looked death bravely in the eye were usually not chosen.”
― Witold Pilecki, The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery

“He is happy who lives in accordance with complete virtue and is sufficiently equipped with external goods, not for some chance period but throughout a complete life.”
― Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics

“Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.”
― Flannery O'Connor