“I like his optimism,' I said. 'I like the way when he and some other rabbis saw a jackal in the ruins of Jerusalem, and the others began to cry, he laughed and said that just as the prophecy of the destruction of the temple was fulfilled, so the prophecy of the rebuilding would also be fulfilled. I like that.”

“…everything has a past. Everything – a person, an object, a word, everything. If you don’t know the past, you can’t understand the present and plan properly for the future.”

“It's not a pretty world, Papa.''I've noticed,' my father said softly.”

“Every man who has shown the world the way to beauty, to true culture, has been a rebel, a 'universal' without patriotism, without home, who has found his people everywhere.”

“But today we become aware of other readings of the human experience very quickly because of the media and the speed with which people travel the planet.”

“As a species we are always hungry for new knowledge.”

“All of us grow up in particular realities - a home, family, a clan, a small town, a neighborhood. Depending upon how we're brought up, we are either deeply aware of the particular reading of reality into which we are born, or we are peripherally aware of it.”

“Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way!Thou art the Potter and I am the clay.”

“In Russia I went to a great yeshiva, and in America I work in a carnival.”

“I sat near a window in our little synagogue and looked out at the large church and wondered how a statue whose face was so full of love could be worshipped by someone whose heart was so full of hate.”

“...a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something.”