“There comes a time in a man’s life when to get where he has to go – if there are no doors or windows he walks through a wall.”

Children were strangers you loved because you could love. If they gave back love when they were grown you were ahead of the game.

The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your normal course

… it’s possible to let love fly by like a cloud in a windy sky if one is too timid, or perhaps unable to believe he is entitled to good fortune.

Of course it would cost something, but he was an expert in cutting corners; and when there were no more corners left he would make circles rounder.

If you ever forget you are a Jew a goy will remind you.

I am somewhat of a meliorist. That is to say, I act as an optimist because I find I cannot act at all, as a pessimist.

(Clothes) cannot change a man’s nature. He’s either kind or he isn’t, with or without clothes.

If the stories come, you get them written, you’re on the right track. Eventually everyone learns his or her own best way. The real mystery to crack is you.

I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.

As long as a man stays alive he can’t tell what chances will pop up next. But a dead man signs no checks.

We have in my country (Russia) a quotation: “It is impossible to make out of apology a fur coat.

First drafts are for learning what your story is about.

Writers who can’t invent stories often substitute style for narrative. They remind me of the painter who couldn’t paint people, so he painted chairs.

All men are Jews, though few men know it.

You can’t eat language but it eases thirst.

One’s fantasy goes for a walk and returns with a bride.

Moonlight floods the whole sky from horizon to horizon; How much it can fill your room depends on its windows.

If it hurts to breathe, open a window.

Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.

We would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright.

There’s a world out there. Open a window, and it’s there.

I have forgotten your love, yet I seem to glimpse you in every window.

So I wait for you like a lonely house till you will see me again and live in me. Till then my windows ache.

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.