I'm a libertine, but it's not my specialty. - Primo Levi

...(he) reminded me by his presence, by his natural and plain manner of being good, that there still existed a just world outside our own, something and someone still pure and whole, not corrupt, not savage, extraneous to hatred and terror; something difficult to define, a remote possibility of good, but for which it was worth surviving.

"Imagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same time of his house, his habits, his clothes, in short, of everything he possesses: he will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and restraint, for he who loses all often easily loses himself. He will be a man whose life or death can be lightly decided with no sense of human affinity, in the most fortunate of cases, on the basis of a pure judgment of utility. It is in this way that one can understand the double sense of the term "extermination camp," and it is now clear what we seek to express with the phrase: "to lie on the bottom.

Era questa, la carne dell'orso:ed ora che sono passati molti anni, rimpiango di averne mangiata poca, poiché, di tutto quanto la vita mi ha dato di buono, nulla ha avuto, neppure alla lontana, il sapore di quella carne, che è il sapore di essere forti e liberi, liberi anche di sbagliare, e padroni del proprio destino.