"Hutte, for instance , used to quote the case of a fellow he called "the beach man ". This man had spent forty years of his life on beaches or by the sides of swimming pools, chatting pleasantly with summer visitors and rich idlers. He is to be seen, in his bathing costume, in the corners and backgrounds of holiday snaps, among groups of happy people, but no one knew his name and why he was there. And no one noticed when one day he vanished from the photographs. I did not dare tell Hutte, but I felt that " the beach man " was myself . Though it would not surprised him if I had confessed it. Hutte was always saying that, in the end, we we're all " beach men " and that the sand keeps the traces of our footsteps only a few moments"

“Circumstance and settings are of no importance. One day this sense of emptiness and remorse submerges you. Then , like a tide, it ebbs and disappears. But in the end it returns in force, and she couldn’t shake it off. Nor could I?”

“There are moments when we are incapable of exchanging a single word with anybody…it’s beyond us…”

“This feeling of not belonging to the same sensation which grips you in a dream, you find yourself walking through an unfamiliar district. On waking you realize, little by little, that the pattern of its streets had overlaid with the one with which, in day time, you are familiar.”

“From one moment to another one can lose heart.”

“Then again, the term “Jew” meant nothing to the fourteen-year-old Dora. When it came down to it, what did people understand by the term “Jew”? For himself, he never gave it a thought. He was used to being put into this or that category by the authorities. Unskilled labourer. Ex –Austrian. French legionnaire. Non- suspect. Ex-serviceman 100% disabled. Foreign statute labourer. Jew.”

“What makes us decide to run away? I remember my own flight on 18 January 1960…. . A calm ordinary winter, not to be compared with that eighteen years earlier. But it seems that the sudden urge to escape may be prompted by one of those cold, grey days which makes you more than ever aware of your solitude, intensifying your feeling that a trap is about to close.”