In Jewish tradition, death-defying devotion to scholarship was the stuff of saintliness.

Monotheism owes its existence not to philosophic speculation about the nature of reality or knowledge or virtue, but to acceptance of reality identified with a supreme being.

The unlettered man who prayed to his maker would be heard; the pedant reciting a faultless invocation would be ignored.

The [Jewish] Sabbath was not intended to be simply a desert of prohibitions, but rather an oasis for moral restoration and seemly pleasure-one was to eat, drink, even be merry.

At Vatican Council II, one dissenting Roman Catholic theologian declared: "Yes, the Bible says "Be fruitful and multiply," but that was when the population was two per square world.

Writing is an affair of yearning for great voyages and hauling on frayed ropes.

Theology emerged not as a course of knowledge but as a feast of homily and imagination and exaggeration in which every man could find his image and his portion. And yet there were limits.

Jews are a singular confusion — difficult to define, awkward to describe, impossible to understand. All the virtues, all the vices, every pleasure, every pain — nothing is spared them.

America has a way of inventing tradition each morning and erasing the past by nightfall, and thehold of ancient custom is endangered by a thousand cicumstances.

God's greatest blessing is children. The only problem is that you have to support them. It's a problem, not a disadvantage.

It was God who dictated what man should believe and do, leaving man the freedom to accept or scoff, to obey or disregard.

Books, I think, are what magic smells like.

Life is an accumulation of what your Heart and mind has pondered most, a conclusion of all you wishes, dreams and desires.

If a man admires a woman he had something in his mind that he would like to carry further. If a woman admires a man, she had definitely made up her mind.

I will not serve God like a labourer, in expectation of my wages.

...since you can't heal your own sick mind with your own sick mind, I needed to consult somebody else's sick mind.

My father said, Bring along your best girl. This is something you say to a pimp!

It is true that some of my fiction was based on actual events. But the events took place after the fiction was written.

The new earth will complete God's program. It will be what God intended for Adam and Eve in Eden.

Most of all, I loved seeing Princess Leia strangling you at the end of Return of the Jedi.

I have a suit in my closet with the pocket cut out. It's a reminder to me that I won't be taking anything with me. The last suit I wear won't need any pockets.