If there are no books. There is no civilization.

One of my rigid goals is to keep each book under 300 pages because I think so much nonfiction is literally weighty that people don't get through these books ... If people don't finish your book, then they don't know what you're talking about.

Is is seldom possible to say of the medievals that they *always* did one thing and *never* another they were marvelously inconsistent.

Throughout the world, half of all children go to bed hungry each night and one in seven of God's children is facing starvation. Before such statistics, believers should never forget Dostoevsky's assertion that the suffering of children is the greatest proof against the existence of God for without justice, there is no God.

The Irish believed that gods, druids, poets, and others in touch with the magical world could be literal shape-shifters

We can hardly get up in the morning or cross the street without being Jewish. We dream Jewish dreams and hope Jewish hopes. Most of our best words, in fact - new, adventure, surprise unique, individual, person, vocation time, history, future freedom, progress, spirit faith, hope, justice - are the gifts of the Jews.

(The festival) was awfully impersonal and abstract and there was something really gloomy about it. That's when I first started thinking about the typical view of reality.