Kindness, I've discovered, is everything in life.

The waste basket is the writer's best friend.

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

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

We know what a person thinks not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his actions.

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.

There are 500 reasons I write for children.... Children read books, not reviews. They don't give a hoot about the critics.... They don't read to free themselves of guilt, to quench their thirst for rebellion, or to get rid of alienation. They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff.... They don't expect their beloved writer to redeem humanity. Young as they are, they know that it is not in his power. Only the adults have such childish illusions.