Do you know how some people can do anything?” “What do you mean?” “I mean, you tell them to write a tune, they give you a symphony right there. You tell them to write a book, they write you a novel in a day. You tell them to move a spoon without touching it, they move it. If they want something, they make it happen. Miracles, almost.

This object that we hold in our hands, a book... that tactile pleasure, it's just not going to go away.

Oh, filmmakers, please don't take my soft book and turn it into a horror, or take my horror and make it soft.

I don't cry at books or movies. Ever. So imagine my shock and awe when I read 'The Time Traveler's Wife' for the second time, and I knew the ending, and I started to cry.

I adore book-to-film adaptations when they're done well, and I'm more lenient than many readers when it comes to what counts as 'done well.' For me, the most important thing is that the film maintains the spirit of the original book.

The biggest mistake you can make is assuming that creativity will hit you all at once and the muse will carry you to the end of the book on feather wings while Foster the People plays gently in the background. Storytelling is work. Pleasurable work, usually, but it is work.

I think that whenever a book is not a challenge, I'm telling the wrong story.

I never teach the same course twice.

I never felt any attraction towards violence. I never tried to express myself through violence. Violence is a language.

The Bible is not only laws, it's also stories.

One always goes back to one's childhood in the beginning, and I come from a very religious family and surrounding. Very religious.

Religion is a very personal thing for me. Religion has its good moments and its poor moments.

I would like to see real peace and a state of Israel living peacefully alongside a state of Palestine.

I love teaching.

I don't like docudramas. Documentaries should not go together with fiction, or half-fiction or quarter-fiction. The two should not go together. They cannot mix.

Historically, I come from Jewish history. I had the classic upbringing in the Yeshiva, learning, learning, and more learning.

When I was young I lost everything.

Now, when I hear that Christians are getting together in order to defend the people of Israel, of course it brings joy to my heart. And it simply says, look, people have learned from history.

I have to be self-conscious of what I'm trying to do with my life.

It used to be said that when the Baal Shem Tov came into a town, his impact was so strong, he didn't have to speak. His disciples had to dance or to sing or to preach to have the same effect. I think a real messenger, myself or anyone, by the very fact that he is there as a person, as a symbol, could have the same impact.

You would be amazed at the number of doors a Nobel Prize opens.

The Bible is not only laws, it's also stories. It begins, 'In the beginning God created Heaven.' If I had written these words, I wouldn't have written anything else; it's just enough.

I remember, May 1944: I was 15-and-a-half, and I was thrown into a haunted universe where the story of the human adventure seemed to swing irrevocably between horror and malediction.

When did I learn the Bible? When I was four or five years old. It's still the pull of my childhood, a fascination with the vanished world, and I can find everything except that world.