I listen to music when I write. I need the musical background. Classical music. I'm behind the times. I'm still with Baroque music, Gregorian chant, the requiems, and with the quartets of Beethoven and Brahms. That is what I need for the climate, for the surroundings, for the landscape: the music.

For in my tradition, as a Jew, I believe that whatever we receive we must share.

In my town we studied the five Books of Moses, but rarely the prophets. We studied the Talmud so much that I sometimes knew the prophets because of the prophetic quotations in the Talmud. We almost never studied the prophets themselves.

I belong to a tradition that believes that the death of a single child is a blemish on creation.

The Holocaust is not a cheap soap opera. The Holocaust is not a romantic novel. It is something else.

every question possessed a power that was lost in the answer . . .

When has religion ever been unifying? Religion has introduced many wars in this world, enough bloodshed and violence.