I am filled with awe that filmmakers have the capacity to stir us and give us back a sense of wonder.

On the stage you're there, it's live. There's a beginning, a middle, an end. When something is funny you hear it right away.

John Huston was the kind of director that totally left you alone. Not every actor always does it right, every time, but most of the time he was re-directing someone. He was making tight adjustments, and not even in terms of interpretation because he knew that by the time that the character had been filmed... well, he got it right when he cast you.

Having come to live in this age is as though one were to have entered another country. Learn its language or risk being left out.

For I firmly believe that Jewish life, indeed any communal life, can only be organized according to democratic principles.

All too often arrogance accompanies strength, and we must never assume that justice is on the side of the strong. The use of power must always be accompanied by moral choice.

I am determined to give the Yiddish language a fighting chance to survive.