Literature is the memory of humanity.

Whatever doesn't really happen is dreamed at night. It happens to one if it doesn't happen to another, tomorrow if not today, or a century hence if not next year.

Heaven and earth conspire that everything which has been, be rooted and reduced to dust. Only the dreamers, who dream while awake, call back the shadows of the past and braid nets from the unspun thread.

Those who run around with women don't walk tightropes. They find it hard enough to crawl on the ground.

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

Whenever I'm in trouble, I pray. And because I'm in trouble all of the time, I pray almost constantly.

I have heard from my father and mother all the answers that faith in God could offer to those who doubt and search for the truth. In our home and in many other homes the eternal questions were more actual than the latest news in the Yiddish newspaper. In spite of all the disenchantments and all my skepticism I believe that the nations can learn much from those Jews, their way of thinking, their way of bringing up children, their finding happiness where others see nothing but misery and humiliation.