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

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.

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

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.

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.

I see courage everywhere I go in Africa.

One of my favorite occupations is making radio/video edits. I love singles.

Writers are the most terrible kleptomaniacs.

When I try to use incantations at work i often find they have no effect and my coworkers just laugh at me.

I like places where you can dance to crazy music, like Bedlam or Eastern Bloc in the East Village.

When I was in second grade, my mother moved from Miami to this evangelical conservative environment in western North Carolina, two miles down the road from Billy Graham and his wife, Ruth.

You get to go and play with the big boys, it's a very privileged thing for us to do. So I'm sure we have more ideas than what I actually have time for.

An observer can't tell if a person is silent and still because inner life has stalled or because inner life is transfixingly busy.

The trouble is, you can't properly present something you don't believe in.

The primary purpose of adoption is to provide a home for a child, not a child for a home.