In other words, Judaism is not Calvinism.

The span of a man's life - that is nothing. But what a man makes of that span - that is something. A man must make his own meaning for life. Meaning is not automatically given to life.

I think most serious writers, certainly in the modern period, use their own lives or the lives of people close to them or lives they have heard about as the raw material for their creativity.

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

I don't work on my Sabbath. I write five-and-a-half or six days a week.

I'm not altogether certain that a fundamentalism of necessity has to argue that it is the only reading of the human experience in order to stay alive.

I looked at my right hand, the hand with which I painted. There was power in that hand. Power to create and destroy. Power to bring pleasure and pain. Power to amuse and horrify. There was in that hand the demonic and the divine at one and the same time. The demonic and the divine were two aspects of the same force. Creation was demonic and divine. Creativity was demonic and divine. I was demonic and divine.