I have no interest in writing confessions, in deliberately baring myself to my readers. I prefer to remain behind a screen.

I have no interest in writing confessions, in deliberately baring myself to my readers. I prefer to remain behind a screen.

I think that Jews - because they are a distinct, gifted and successful group that differentiates itself from societies in which it lives - are vulnerable wherever the rule of law is not paramount.

I think I am less self-assured when I write English than I would be if I were writing in my first language. I have to test each sentence over and over to be sure that it's right, that I haven't introduced some element that isn't English.

I'm not ashamed to admit that occasionally I've found myself aroused by my own depictions of sex.

If a comparative-literature major had existed at Harvard College for undergraduates I would have surely gone in that direction.

My views about the safety of Jews in the world have not been changed by the work on the Dreyfus affair or, for that matter, by the work I did on Franz Kafka for the book on him I published a year before the Dreyfus book appeared.