Often I say to myself "Really, what are we doing on this planet?" We are passing the message as well as we can, communicating our fears, our hopes ... Day in day out, week after week and year after year, people kill each other.

This is the role of writers: to turn their tears into a story - and perhaps into a prayer.

Go over to Greece with the Iliad and Odyssey. These have elements of history, and they have non-historical elements. It's very difficult to pull them apart. And I think there's not much reason to.

We believed in God, trusted in man, and lived with the illusion that every one of us has been entrusted with a sacred spark.

Only fanatics — in religion as well as in politics — can find a meaning in someone else’s death.

Warmed-over loves and soups are generally not recommended.

The term is piqua nevish [?] it means to save a soul, to save a life. And that commandment supersedes all others. It means literally you may violate almost everything except, I think, three commandments of the heart, 613, - you may do anything, violate any commandment and the injunction simply to save a human life. And there are enough lives to be saved in - in Tibet.