My faith is a wounded faith, but it's not without faith. My life is not without faith.

I feel very close to French culture and to the French humanism, which occasionally one finds, even in the highest places. And therefore, all of my books have been written in French.

I want to go back to the child I used to be, and to read with the same naiveté [the Pentateuch]. I want to leave science aside and go back to the pure perception offered to me in the text that is waiting there for me year after year.

I have to be self-conscious of what I'm trying to do with my life.

In my little town, Sighet, which is in Romania, Hungary-Romania, but a real shtetl, a little [Jewish] village - and we began with the Chumash [Pentateuch], probably at age four.

When I say it doesn't make much difference, I mean in terms of the importance of the piece of literature.

Christians call it the "Sacrifice of Isaac," and Jews call it the "Binding of Isaac."