I grew up in a household in which the Bible played very little role.

We are thrown back on the text, for the most part. Archaeology can give us background. It doesn't either confirm or disprove the Bible, but it may illuminate it.

My own interest is far more in the Hebrew Bible. My religion is more personally related to the Hebrew Bible than it is to the New Testament.

The Garden of Eden presents the same story: If you want to make yourself gods, you'll find you're akin to the animals.

If one attempts to achieve deity or to have the holy, he is thrown back; he is refused. His language is taken from him. He can no longer even communicate. That's the Tower of Babel.

Israel defined its God and its relation to that God in existential, relational terms. They did not, until quite late, approach the question of one God in an abstract philosophical way.

I prefer to have all of this apparatus - historical, literary, critical - and then, beyond initial innocence and naiveté, to try to achieve a new innocence, a new naiveté.

I think we may very well, in many areas, get likelihood, but not certitude. We don't want certitude anyway, do we?

We want to live in ambiguity. This is the human condition.

There was certainly an old law code which stands behind the earliest form of Deuteronomy. Presumably that is what was lost.

With the Hebrew Bible, you're living in an austere world.

The divinity you seek is born with you.

All places are alike, and every earth is fit for burial.

Moderation is essential in all things, madam, but never in my life have I failed to beat a teetotaller.

The eyes are the windows of your soul, and when you're acting, they're one of your most important instruments. Especially for close-ups!

Whoever said that artists shouldn't pay attention to their business was probably someone w/their hand in some artist's pocket.

Rethinking capitalism means rethinking the role of the public sector, the role of the private sector, the role of finance, and the relationship between them all.

Not even if you fed me your firstborn, still wet and screaming

Crispus Attucks, who said, Don't shoot till you see the whites! Never got a dinner!

I'm a really big surfer, and I have also been playing a ton of volleyball on the beach on the weekends.

I can't remember. . . . My character was sort of unconscious for it.