Seeds must be sown everywhere. Only some will bear fruit. But there would not be the fruit from the few had the many not been sown

I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life.

I do not know what evil is when it comes to art. I only know what is good art and what is bad art.

It is when you are angry that you must watch how you talk.

A writer is a strange instrument of our species, a harp of sorts, fine-tuned to the dark contradictions of life.

Truth has to be given in riddles. People can't take truth if it comes charging at them like a bull. The bull is always killed. You have to give people the truth in a riddle, hide it so they go looking for it and find it piece by piece; that way they learn to live with it.

To the extent that I come from a deeply religious tradition and have been contending with those beginnings all of my life - that constitutes the subject of much of my early fiction.