[ Rabbi Shlomo ben Isaac] was the greatest commentator [of the Bible] we ever had.

That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life - that is what is abnormal.

Whatever we thought was certain is no longer certain, and therefore in science probably certain things must be correct, but in human behaviour I am not so sure.

I was never without a book in my hand.

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

Next to him lay his violin, trampled, an eerily poignant little corpse.

One day - I remember it was a Sabbath afternoon - I came to the synagogue with a book in my hand. I saw a commentary on the Bible by a certain Rabbi Moshe Dessauer, better known as Moses Mendelssohn. An elderly man came up to me - I was then maybe 10 or 12. "What are you studying?" he said. "Dessauer's commentaries," I said. So he gave me a slap on my face.