I wanted to write a commentary on the Bible, to write about the Talmud, about celebration, about the great eternal subjects: love and happiness.

I do not belong to this world. I continue to write everything in longhand. If I have to see something on the Internet, I ask my secretary or students. I am lucky, because I have people who do it for me.

I believe in superstitions. You don't talk about a child who hasn't been born.

I do not recall a Jewish home without a book on the table.

I'll tell you what: I believe mysticism is a very serious endeavor. One must be equipped for it.

That is my major preoccupation, memory, the kingdom of memory. I want to protect and enrich that kingdom, glorify that kingdom and serve it.

When my father was born, it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. When I was born, it was Lithuania. When I left, it was Hungary. It is difficult to say where I come from.

Religion is not man's relationship to God, it is man's relationship to man.

If I were in the government, I would persuade the prime minister to see the beauty in the fact that people see Israel as a haven - from their sadness to their hope.

Man, as long as he lives, is immortal. One minute before his death he shall be immortal. But one minute later, God wins.

If I were immersed in constant melancholy, I would not be who I am.

Moses was the greatest legislator and the commander in chief of perhaps the first liberation army.

For in my tradition, as a Jew, I believe that whatever we receive we must share.

Sometimes I am asked if I know 'the response to Auschwitz; I answer that not only do I not know it, but that I don't even know if a tragedy of this magnitude has a response.

What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It's close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically.

I don't know much about politics, and I don't want to know. That's why I rarely involve myself in politics.

I'm a teacher and a writer; my life is words. When I see the denigration of language, it hurts me, and it's easy to denigrate a word by trivializing it.

That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life - that is what is abnormal.

In my tradition, one must wait until one has learned a lot of Bible and Talmud and the Prophets to handle mysticism. This isn't instant coffee. There is no instant mysticism.

I will say, with memoir, you must be honest. You must be truthful.

I've given my life to the principle and the ideal of memory, and remembrance.

Language failed me very often, but then, the substitute for me was silence, but not violence.

In the concentration camps, we discovered this whole universe where everyone had his place. The killer came to kill, and the victims came to die.

It's clear to me that one can't be Jewish without Israel. Religious or non-religious, Zionist or non-Zionist, Ashkenazi or Sephardic - all these will not exist without Israel.