When the Second World War finished, I was 23, and already I had seen enough horror to last me a lifetime. I'd seen dreadful, dreadful things, without saying a word. So seeing horror depicted on film doesn't affect me much.
Whatever terrible things may have happened to you, only one thing allows them to damage your core self, and that is continued belief in them.
I did realise more than ever, after the stabbing, that tennis is a business - a tough business.
Terror made me cruel.
No one escapes from a war. No one. Not even the survivors. You accept things that would appall you at any other time because life has temporarily lost all meaning.
Because Laura Palmer was dead... there was always this strange sense that people were seeing a ghost when they would see me.
Physically my brain is in great shape. My motor functions are fine, but I think going through the whole ordeal... coming pretty close to death, may have affected my priorities.
When I was growing up my mother would say, 'Your dad may have to learn about being a father because he lost his own and that would have affected him'.
If my father had hugged me even once, I'd be an accountant right now.
I had a really good childhood up until I was nine, then a classic case of divorce really affected me.
When threats become unspeakable, unshareable and even unreadable, their power over us only grows.
To me, the idea that any kind of disaster helps create a nation seems a ridiculous one. There was no family in the house on the land next to me, and there might have been.
In my world death will come chasing. In your world it will start whispering in your ear to destroy yourself. I know this because it started whispering to me when I was in the detention center.
Funny how the nature of a normal day is the first memory to fade.
If you haven't been in a war and are wondering how long it takes to get used to losing everything you think you need or love, I can tell you the answer is no time at all.
Pain can give you sight or make you blind.
I feel connected to the Second World War because my father lost his father in that war. So, through my dad and the effect it had on him of losing his father young, I always felt connected to the war. It goes back years, but it still feels to me as if we're completely living in it.
I think we have lost our groove as a country. One of the reasons was the attack on 9/11. We got knocked off our game. From a country that always exported hope we went into the business of exporting fear.
I think Israel suffered a certain trauma from a unilateral step of pulling out of Gaza.
There's a fine line between character building and soul destroying.
You can't underestimate how traumatic divorce is for the children.
Something did happen to me somewhere that robbed me of confidence and courage and left me with a fear of discovery and change and a positive dread of everything unknown that may occur.
You practically do not use semicolons at all. This is a symptom of mental defectiveness, probably induced by camp life.
People grow; people grow apart, and cancer... I've had a very in-depth and personal experience with cancer, and it really causes a perspective shift.
After every war, there was a significant change in the music, and I can understand how that happened. If you participate in protecting the country, you think you can be part of it, but you come back home and it's worse than ever.
