What sort of attractions do you think lured our coreligionists out of the ghetto and into the mainstream of European culture? Was it the wit of Molière, or the ingenious stage mechanisms of Pixérécourt? Or was it simply the opportunity to cast an eye, without shame, upon the living, unclad human form?

I think architectural appreciation would be a minor occupation after a nuclear war. People would just be happy to have something to eat.

In America, there's a very long tradition of a comic strip that comes in newspapers, which is not true all over the world. To sell papers, they put color comics in. It's worked, up until now. Now these papers can't afford it. They always had minuscule ad budgets, and now the things which people probably read these papers for are gone.

The click [of a light switch] is the modern triumphal clarion proceeding us through life, announcing our entry into every lightless room.

You know how misleading an image is. You see an image in the newspaper, if they left the caption off, good luck knowing what's going on. There is something inherently misleading about images, so they need annotation.

A picture story just doesn't run like a film. It doesn't have 24 frames per second. It doesn't deal with this illusion of movement.

I always lived in old buildings, and I thought about who lived here before. You'd have to be oblivious not to.

I think Jewish history did away with a priesthood when the Temple was destroyed, and it became, supposedly, a religion of scholars. A rabbi is just a scholar.

I never wore a watch. I always depend on public clocks, and stores have clocks, but that is strange.

I've wasted the last five years of my life dealing in religious articles. People today find spiritual solace in ballroom dancing.

You can have your own watch and always doubt it. If I had a watch I'd probably always be doubting it or the batteries would be dying. I just know that people always have trouble with their watches, and that's why I like public clocks.

I live in an apartment building built in 1925, and it hasn't been heavily renovated, so I feel very much connected to that time and what went on in that place.