For the good of all, I say: Be careful, the brutality of the world must not be more powerful or attractive than love and friendship.

The Holocaust is a sacred subject. One should take off one's shoes when entering its domain, one should tremble each time one pronounces the word.

I would say to [Chinese government], You don't need Tibet really. You don't need all the problems Tibet creates for you. It's so small, so far away. Give them their religious freedom and I know that they wouldn't misuse it.

Occasionally, I come to moments of anguish in the text.

It's easier to be conformist naturally; it's easier except for those who don't like conformism.

My approach is not a scientific approach. For that, we have greater minds than mine. My approach is: I am in the possession of a text, it has survived so many centuries, and it is my task, my pleasure, to try to decipher it and find all the things that have been said about these few words by generations and generations of commentators. That is what I'm doing. I don't innovate anything. I'm just repeating.

Only the guilty are guilty: the children of killers are not killers, but children.