We Jews have a special attachment to the Book. The study of page after page in tomes yellowing with age was obligatory.

Having come to live in this age is as though one were to have entered another country. Learn its language or risk being left out.

No heirloom of humankind captures the past as do art and language.

In my world, history comes down to language and art. No one cares much about what battles were fought, who won them and who lost them - unless there is a painting, a play, a song or a poem that speaks of the event.

I tried for a while to be an agricultural worker and was hopelessly bored. To me it was meaningless. I would stand around in heaps of manure and sings about the beauty of the work I wasn't doing.