I think about fanaticism - oblivion awaits, especially for minor writers, so you have to be a fanatic; you have to be a crank to keep going, but on the other hand, what else would you do with the rest of your life? You gotta do something.

Is there a word more passionate than passion? Obsession, total immersion, the feeling that everything else doesn't matter.

Two things remain irretrievable: time and a first impression.

He who cries, 'What do I care about universality? I only know what is in me,' does not know even that.

Above all, a book is a riverbank for the river of language. Language without the riverbank is only television talk - a free fall, a loose splash, a spill.

The secular Jew is a figment; when a Jew becomes a secular person he is no longer a Jew.

The imagination has resources and intimations we don't even know about.