What was lost in the European cataclysm was not only the Jewish past--the whole life of a civilization--but also a major share ofthe Jewish future.... [ellipsis in source] It was not only the intellect of a people in its prime that was excised, but the treasure of a people in its potential.

I can't claim to be disenchanted "with the current state of fiction" because I read so little of it. My reading is mostly drawn to history.

To imagine the unimaginable is the highest use of the imagination

In saying what is obvious, never choose cunning. Yelling works better.

Much of the academy on the humanities side, English departments in particular, no longer write what can pass for normal English.

Death persecutes before it executes.

In 1952, I had gone to England on a literary pilgrimage, but what I also saw, even at that distance from the blitz, were bombed-out ruins and an enervated society, while the continent was still, psychologically, in the grip of its recent atrocities.