I was five years old when I wrote my first song. It was out of longing for my father that I wrote it.

People's talk and the stories they tell have been engraved on my heart, and some of them have flown into my pen.

But always I regarded myself as one who was born in Jerusalem.

Through a historical catastrophe - the destruction of Jerusalem by the emperor of Rome - I was born in one of the cities in the diaspora. But I always deemed myself a child of Jerusalem, one who is in reality a native of Jerusalem.

After all my possessions had been burned, God gave me the wisdom to return to Jerusalem.

Not every man remembers the name of the cow which supplied him with each drop of milk he has drunk.

It is not enough for a man to dwell in the Land of Israel, he must also pray to be free.