Joel Smith

“It was all a big joke. I could see that now. There was no rhyme or reason to whether we lived or died. One day it might be the man next to you at roll call who is torn apart by dogs. The next day it might be you who is shot through the head. You could play the game perfectly and still lose, so why bother playing at all?”
― Alan Gratz, Prisoner B-3087

“The ceremony was fast so we wouldn't be caught. When it was over, the men all whispered 'Mazel tov' and climbed back onto their shelves. I went up to the boy and pressed the wooden horse into his hands, the only present I could give him. The boy looked at me with big, round eyes. Had I ever been so young?

'We are alive,' I told him. 'We are alive, and that is all that matters. We cannot let them tear us from the pages of the world.'

I said it as much for me as for him. I said it in memory of Uncle Moshe, and my mother and father, and my aunts and other uncles and cousins. The Nazis had put me in a gas chamber. I had thought I was dead, but I was alive. I was a new man that day, just like the bar mitzvah boy. I was a new man, and I was going to survive.”
― Alan Gratz, Prisoner B-3087

“It was easy to see the worst of humanity, when all I saw was brutality and selfishness, and these people showed me that there was still good in the world. Even if I rarely saw it.”
― Alan Gratz

“How come you're always calling that TV weather guy?

Yeah you're obsessed with him!”
― Lincoln Peirce, Big Nate: From the Top