Poets & Writers Theater

"We may use words to break that prison...that is why I wrote that book, and that is why I wrote the others." Elie Wiesel explains his reasons for writing Night (Hill & Wang, 1960), the first in a trilogy of books about his experiences during the Holocaust, and the challenges in getting it published. Wiesel passed away on July 2 at the age of eighty-seven.

"This is what we must do—not to sleep well when people suffer anywhere in the world." Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel speaks about the power of law to change people's lives while accepting the 2012 William O. Douglas Award.

"We must choose between the violence of adults and the smiles of children, between the ugliness of hate and the will to oppose it," writes the Nobel Prize winner and Holocaust survivor. "Even in darkness it is possible to create light and encourage compassion. There it is. I still believe in man in spite of man."