When the judge calls the criminal's name out he stands up, and they are immediately linked by a strange biology that makes them both opposite and complementary. The one cannot exist without the other. Which is the sun and which is the shadow? It's well known some criminals have been great men.

I decided to be what crime made of me.

It's the hour when night breaks away from the day, my dove, let me go.

I'm homosexual. How and why are idle questions. It's a little like wanting to know why my eyes are green.

Would Hamlet have felt the delicious fascination of suicide if he hadn't had an audience, and lines to speak?

A great wind swept over the ghetto, carrying away shame, invisibility and four centuries of humiliation. But when the wind dropped people saw it had been only a little breeze, friendly, almost gentle.

...the characters in my books all resemble each other. They live, with minor variations, the same moments, the same perils, and when I speak of them, my language, which is inspired by them, repeats the same poems in the same tone.