I saw this quote as Jon Winokur's Twitter. You can find out more about Elie Wiesel at Wikipedia.
I write to understand as much as to be understood.
Here is the quote in context, Elie Wiesel's essay, "Why I Write."
While writing, I question them as I question myself. I believe I said it before, elsewhere: I write to understand as much as to be understood. Will I succeed one day? Wherever one starts from one reaches darkness. God? He remains the God of darkness. Man? Source of Darkness. the killers' sneers, their victim's tears, the onlookers' indifference, their complicity and complacency, the divine role in all that: I do not understand. A million children massacred: I shall never understand.
Jewish children: they haunt my writings. I see them again and again. I shall always see them. hounded, humiliated, bent like old men who surround them as they to protect them, unable to do so. They are thirsty, the children, and there is no one to give them water. They are hungry, the children, but there is no one to give them a crust of bread. They are afraid, and there is no one to reassure them.
