I am thankful, of course, for the prize and thankful to God for each story, each idea, each word, each day.

When the time comes I will go joyfully. Whatever may be there, it will be real, without complication, without ridicule, without deception.

The characters have their own lives and their own logic, and you have to act accordingly.

In our time, when the literature for adults is deteriorating, good books for children are the only hope, the only refuge.

Life is God's novel. Let him write it.

It is written, better to be a fool all your days than for one hour to be evil. You are not a fool. They are the fools. For he who causes his neighbor to feel shame loses Paradise himself.

The Jewish people have been in exile for 2,000 years; they have lived in hundreds of countries, spoken hundreds of languages and still they kept their old language, Hebrew. They kept their Aramaic, later their Yiddish; they kept their books; they kept their faith.