In Russia I went to a great yeshiva, and in America I work in a carnival.

It is impossible to fuse totally with a culture for which you feel a measure of antagonism.

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.

As you grow older you will discover that the most important things that will happen to you will often come as a result of silly things, as you call them --"ordinary things" is a better expression. That is the way the world is.

In other words, Judaism is not Calvinism.

You have to want to listen to it, and then you can hear it. It has a strange, beautiful texture. It doesn't always talk. Sometimes-sometimes it cries, and you can hear the pain of the world in it. It hurts to listen to it then. But you have to.

I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own.