Szpilman Quotes & Sayings

I'd always need a creative outlet. But sometimes, I do fantasize what my life would be like if I weren't famous. — Jodie Foster

Street traders were doing good business selling a paper toy which represented a pig, but if you put the paper together and unfolded it in a certain way it turned into Hitler's face. — Wladyslaw Szpilman

Be still and calm, don't fear your past but use it for our future..! — Nitesh Nishad

Every country has its own perspective on the Second World War. This is not surprising when experiences and memories are so different. — Antony Beevor

That evening it was announced that curfew would be postponed until midnight, so that the families of those 'sent for labour' would have time to bring them blankets, a change of underwear and food for the journey. This 'magnanimity' on the part of the Germans was truly touching, and the Jewish police made much of it in an effort to win our confidence. Not until much later did I learn that the thousand men rounded up in the ghetto had been taken straight to the camp at Treblinka, so that the Germans could test the efficiency of the newly built gas chambers and crematorium furnaces. — Wladyslaw Szpilman

I used to say, read as much as you can. Now I say, read the best that you can, the stories that resonate with you, the books that are important to you. Try to read, not only as a reader, but also as a writer, to deconstruct how the author is telling his or her story. — Cristina Henriquez

Life is not defined by what you achieve, but what you give. — Debasish Mridha

It's strange. When I put something incomprehensible into a picture, it's usually because the form and colour interest me and because it just happens to fit in. Thwn my friends come along : 'What is that suppose to mean _' And they rack their brains for an interpretation, finding so many ingenious explanations that I feel quite proud of all the unarticulated ideas concealed in my pictures." - Fernand Khnopff to Alma Mahler, while walking in the Prater in Vienna, from her diary July 1899 — Fernand Khnopff

Humanity seems doomed to do more evil than good. The greatest ideal on earth is human love. — Wladyslaw Szpilman

So we both strip off our boots and socks and, while there's some improvement, I could swear he's making an effort to snap every branch we encounter — Suzanne Collins

And now I was lonelier, I supposed, than anyone else in the world. Even Defoe's creation, Robinson Crusoe, the prototype of the ideal solitary, could hope to meet another human being. Crusoe cheered himself by thinking that such a thing could happen any day, and it kept him going. But if any of the people now around me came near I would need to run for it and hide in mortal terror. I had to be alone, entirely alone, if I wanted to live. — Wladyslaw Szpilman

Mine. He was mine, and not even death would take him from me - not if I could help it. — Patricia Briggs

The wrong way to go about this is to say: Well, researchers have 'proved' that animals only understand fifty words or something similarly absurd. Or that communication with other species is an illusion. Communication is not the preserve of humans; it is the one thing that is truly universal. — Lawrence Anthony

The workers went along with the Nazis, the Church stood by and watched, the middle classes were too cowardly to do anything, and so were the leading intellectuals. We allowed the unions to be abolished, the various religious denominations to be suppressed, there was no freedom of speech in the press or on the radio. Finally we let ourselves be driven into war. We were content for Germany to do without democratic representation and put up with pseudo-representation by people with no real say in anything. Ideals can't be betrayed with impunity, and now we must all take the consequences. — Wladyslaw Szpilman

There is much in Christianity which can be subjected to exact analysis. But the ultimate things are shrouded in the silent mysteries of God. — Hans Urs Von Balthasar

It's a disgrace to us all! he almost screamed. 'We're letting them take us to our death like sheep to the slaughter!.....at least we could break out of the ghetto, or at least die honourably, not as a stain on the face of history! — Wladyslaw Szpilman

Jesus's gospel is not about a cosmic religious apocalypse upon rebellious pagans. His gospel is about a new messianic kingdom where He rules in the spirit of His Father, a kingdom full of joy, grace, freedom, and release from all that ails humanity. — Hugh Halter

Our hearts, the war.
Her body, the battlefield. — Rick Yancey

There exists no objective basis on which to elevate one species above another. — Richard Dawkins