FACTBOX: Quotes from "Killing Fields" survivor Dith Pran

(Reuters) - Dith Pran, whose ordeal at the hands of Cambodia's brutal Khmer Rouge regime was depicted in the movie "The Killing Fields," became a crusader for the restoration of his homeland.

Dith, who died on Sunday at age 65, compiled a book of recollections of survivors of Cambodia's genocide and was named a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. In addition to working as a photographer for The New York Times, he ran the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project.

Following are quotes from Dith about Cambodia:

* "It is important for me that the new generation of Cambodians and Cambodian Americans become active and tell the world what happened to them and their families ... I want them never to forget the faces of their relatives and friends who were killed during that time. The dead are crying out for justice."

-- Introductory note in his compilation "Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors."

"I see ... a pile of skulls and bones. For the first time since my arrival, what I see before me is too painful, and I break down completely. These are my relatives, friends and neighbors, I keep thinking ... It is a long time before I am calm again. And then I am able, with my bare hands, to rearrange the skulls and bones so that they are not scattered about."

-- Writing about his return to Cambodia for The New York Times in 1989.

* "This is sad for the Cambodian people because he was never held accountable for the deaths of 2 million of his fellow countryman. The Jewish people's search for justice did not end with the death of Hitler and the Cambodian people's search for justice doesn't end with Pol Pot."

-- Upon the death of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot in 1998, quoted in The Times.

"There is no doctor who can heal me. But I know that a man like Pol Pot, he is even sicker than I am. He is crazy in the head because he believed in killing people. He believed in starving children. We both have the horror in our heads."

-- A 1991 Los Angeles Times interview.

* "I saw light, like the sunrise, when I got to the border but I felt nervous until today -- when I get complete freedom."

-- Quoted in The Times in 1986 on the day he became a U.S. citizen and recalling his escape from Cambodia into Thailand.

(Compiled by Bill Trott; Editing by Patricia Zengerle)