I'm constantly revising. Once the book is written and typed, I go through the entire draft again..

A non-fiction writer pretty much has the shape of the figure in front of him or her and goes about refining it. A work of non-fiction is not as diffi….

In our time ... a man whose enemies are faceless bureaucrats almost never wins. It is our equivalent to the anger of the gods in ancient times. But t….

There is in my work a very strong religious foreground and background. In the later work some of that tends to diminish, but it's certainly present i….

I think that to a very great extent we are partners with the divine in this enterprise called history. That is an ongoing relationship, and there is ….

A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable ….

A man is born into this world with only a tiny spark of goodness in him. The spark is God, it is the soul; the rest is ugliness and evil, a shell. Th….

If I had a plot that was all set in advance, why would I want go through the agony of writing the novel? A novel is a kind of exploration and discove….

I don't work on my Sabbath. I write five-and-a-half or six days a week..

I will go wherever the truth leads me. It is secular scholarship, Rebbe; it is not the scholarship of tradition. In secular scholarship there are no ….

I think the hardest part of writing is revising. And by that I mean the following: A novelist has to create the piece of marble and then chip away to….

Two hundred or more years ago most people on the planet were never aware of any reality other than the one into which they were brought up..

Oh, it makes a difference, I thought. And if it doesn't make a difference you will make it make a difference..

I went away and cried to the Master of the Universe, "What have you done to me? A mind like this I need for a son? A heart I need for a son, a soul I….

If a person has a contribution to make, he must make it in public. If learning is not made public, it is a waste..

I do not know what evil is when it comes to art. I only know what is good art and what is bad art..

As you grow older you will discover that the most important things that will happen to you will often come as a result of silly things, as you call t….

It is impossible to fuse totally with a culture for which you feel a measure of antagonism..

In Russia I went to a great yeshiva, and in America I work in a carnival..

I won't talk to you about my family and you won't talk to me about yours. Family talk is either boring or self-pitying. Or it's Gothic, like a Faulkn….

… the world will indulge you just so long Asher Lev. Then it will stop. You will simply have to grow accustomed to that truth..