[The] three characteristics a work of fiction must possess in order to be successful: 1. It must have a precise and suspenseful plot. 2. The author must feel a passionate urge to write it. 3. He must have the conviction, or at least the illusion, that he is the only one who can handle this particular theme.

“It is written, better to be a fool all your days than for one hour to be evil. You are not a fool. They are the fools. For he who causes his neighbor to feel shame loses Paradise himself.”

After the meal, the couple retired to their bedroom. Man and wife don’t usually lie together in the daytime, but when he went outside to close the shutters, she did not protest. As soon as he put his arm around her she was aroused, like all adolescent— since a woman who has not been pregnant, remains virginal forever.

Buildings will collapse, power plants will stop generating electricity. Generals will drop atomic bombs on their own populations. Mad revolutionaries will run in the streets, crying fantastic slogans. I have often thought it would begin in New York. This metropolis has all the symptoms of a mind gone berserk.

Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.

Esther could not conceive. In every other way she was a good wife; she knew how to knit, sew a wedding gown, bake gingerbread and tarts, tear out the pip of a chicken, apply a cupping glass or leeches, even bleed a patient.

Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.

If you keep saying things are going to be bad, you have a chance of being a prophet.

It is a general rule that when the grain of truth cannot be found, men will swallow great helpings of falsehood.

Life is God's novel. Let him write it.