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

If I am proud of anything, it is that I have been granted the privilege of living in the land which God promised our forefathers to give us, as it is written.

God in heaven sits on high and plays games with us. He has plenty to do up there, what with building worlds and then knocking them down again, breaking things up and then rebuilding them, and yet he can manage to put his mind even to a little grocer in his shop or to a babe in the cradle.

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

The beginnings of my studies also came to me from my father, as well as from the Rabbinical Judge of our town. But they were preceded by three tutors under whom I studied, one after the other, from the time I was three and a half till I turned eight and a half.

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.