The more you see what other people do, the more you learn about yourself.

We write not only for children but also for their parents. They, too, are serious children.

If Moses had been paid newspaper rates for the Ten Commandments, he might have written the Two Thousand Commandments.

A story to me must have some surprise...I must have a passion to write the story.

In the half darkness I winked to my other self, my mad dictator, and congratulated him on his droll victory. I closed my eyes and felt the warmth flowing from Shosha's head to my face. What did I have to lose? Nothing more than what everyone loses anyway.

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

The truth is that what the great religions preached, the Yiddish-speaking people of the ghettos practiced day in and day out. They were the people of The Book in the truest sense of the word. They knew of no greater joy than the study of man and human relations, which they called Torah, Talmud, Mussar, Cabala.