Nelly Sachs

“You onlookers, who kill with a stone, you who do not kill with a stone.”

“World, do not ask the one who is leaving, where he is going.”

“You who have not been able to cry out, who have only been able to die—”

“The butterfly will be, will be again, when the word is created anew.”

“O the night of the weeping children! O the night of the children branded for death!”

“O the chimneys on the ingeniously devised habitations of death when Israel's body drifted as smoke through the air.”

“The sand is speaking! The sand is speaking! I hear it speak! It is speaking of death!”

“If I could not have written, I could not have survived.”

“Death was my master from Germany.”

“Peace, you placenta of the future.”

“Everything begins with a longing.”

“A mouth is shattered that wanted to ask.”

“We are all of us wanderers, and our homeland is the stars.”

“The Prophets broke into the night.”