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.

My name is Asher Lev... I am a traitor, an apostate, a self-hater, an inflicter of shame upon my family, my friends, my people; also, I am a mocker of ideas sacred to Christians, a blasphemous manipulator of modes and forms revered by Gentiles for two thousand years.

It is inconceivable to me that a million or three million or half a million human beings will think and feel precisely the same way on any single subject.

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

As a species we are always hungry for new knowledge.

It's always easier to learn something than to use what you've learned. . . . You're alone when you're learning. But you always use it on other people. It's different when there are other people involved.

Each work seems to give me the most trouble at the time I'm working on it.