I'm 100 percent Jewish by blood, but by education I'm nothing. By affiliation I'm nothing.

Perhaps the best proof of the Almighty's existence is that we never know when we are to die.

After having exhausted all the arguments on behalf of evil, one utters the creed's dictums with nostalgia rather than with fervor.

In general, with things unpleasant, the rule is: The sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface.

In America, a metrical poem is likely to conjure up the idea of the sort of poet who wears ties and lunches at the faculty club. In Russia it suggests the moral force of an art practiced against the greatest personal odds, as a discipline, solitary and intense.

Boredom is your window on the properties of time that one tends to ignore to the likely peril of one's mental equilibrium. It is your window on time's infinity. Once this window opens, don't try to shut it; on the contrary, throw it wide open.

There's nothing as dear as the sight of ruins.