There is a quiet humor in Yiddish and a gratitude for every day of life, every crumb of success, each encounter of love... In a figurative way, Yiddish is the wise and humble language of us all, the idiom of a frightened and hopeful humanity.

But my gloom did not lessen. I knew that I'd had a bad dream, and I stood in the dark trying to recollect it. The second I closed my eyes, I was with the dead. They did things words cannot express. They spoke madness. ("Hanka")

We all play chess with Fate as partner. He makes a move, we make a move. He tries to checkmate us in three moves, we try to prevent it. We know we can't win, but we're driven to give him a good fight.

Even in the worm that crawls in the earth there glows a divine spark. When you slaughter a creature, you slaughter God.

No lepidopterist's collection in the entire world...full if iridescent wings, is worth the life of a single butterfly.

Night is a time of rigor, but also of mercy. There are truths which one can see only when it’s dark

A story to me means a plot where there is some surprise... Because this is how life is full of surprises.