I love lighting Shabbat candles at the onset of Shabbat. It helps me create a strong and firm demarcation of time.

I have a principle I often invoke in class: comfortable people don't grow. Good teachers need to engage in the paradox of making students feel comfortable and uncomfortable in equal measure.

If we are indeed created in God's image, then we, too, must create and then we, too, must rest.

For some reason, I write about crash-landed spaceships quite a lot and my wife is sick of hearing of hearing my ideas for new tales about them.

For me, study is a divine and daily imperative, and I study a page of Talmud daily so that I am not only teaching. My teaching is constantly being fed by my learning.

If our writing is worth anything at all, then we have to put ourselves into it.

That's true of every form of literature - each writer brings new things to it because each of us is an individual.

I love space opera, and I believe that every sub-genre has potential no matter how old it is.

In order to survive, the human race must defend itself.

I love going to synagogue on Friday night and being swept in the melodies. Everyone seems more friendly and unburdened by the week and ready to be taken elsewhere.

I took to religion at about age 12; it was very hard for me to be Sabbath observant as a kid in a home which was not Sabbath observant. I think my parents thought the whole Jewish thing was a phase.

To return to the Might God is to truly rely on Him.

In man's struggle against the world, bet on the world.

I am not born to sit still and do nothing. If I lose the game, it shall not be from not striving for it.

Because of the wonderfully positive response to 'Life's That Way,' I am considering writing some more autobiographical stuff - maybe another book. I don't know. It doesn't help that I'm lazy.

Staying humble has always been really important to me, and always being proud of what you're representing.

Often the energy of a piece is more exciting to me than the subject.

Making music is a total hassle, really.

Men are so simple of mind, and so much dominated by their immediate needs, that a deceitful man will always find plenty who are ready to be deceived.

I know that wine is, above all else, a blessing, a gift of nature, a joy as pure and elemental as the soil and vines and sunshine from which it springs.

It is useless to attack men who could not be controlled even if conquered, while failure would leave us in an even worse position.