You have miracles [in the Hebrew Bible], yes, but they're not the work, normally, of demons.

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.

Harvest time is a time of joy.

Why, when you have a mental disease, is it always considered an act of imagination? Why is it that every organ in your body can get sick and you get sympathy except the brain?

I refer to them as miracles-although some may call them fortunate circumstances-because I believe there are no accidents or surprises with God.

I still love the theology of the Mormon religion and think it is a wonderful way to grow up.

Although your father and mother are dead, if you propose to yourself any good work, only reflect how it will make their names illustrious, and your purpose will be fixed.

Playing football was like being trapped in a rhythm, and my whole career was like that. You have very little time to switch off.

Music sets up ladders, it makes us invisible, it sets us apart, it lets us escape; but from the visible there is no escape.

Life may be seen through many windows, none of them necessarily clear or opaque, less or more distorting than any of the others.

Drink to forget; don't forget to drink.

And the end and the beginning were always there Before the beginning and after the end.