“I don't know how it is that you start working at something you don't like, and before you know it you're an old man.”

“You have to know how to look even if you don't know what you're looking for.”

“I know you've heard it a thousand times before. But it's true — hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don't love something, then don't do it.”

“Can you disbelieve in something you don't know about?[…] It isn't that I don't believe but that I don't know.”

“As I sometimes said to the important Jews, when I had them, something like: 'Well then, do you know where you are? You're with the Czar of the Jews. Don't you know that, didn't you see the Pariser Tageblatt?!”

“I know it's important to do more than just complain when there's something you don't like. You need to try to do something about it, or you're nothing but a whiner.”

“There is no such thing as duty. If you know that a thing is right, you want to do it. If you don't want to do it—it isn't right. If it's right and you don't want to do it—you don't know what right is and you're not a man.”

“When you're writing you're trying to find out something which you don't know.”

“You don't know how strong something is until you actually test it.”

“It is on a day like this one,
a little later a little earlier
that you descover without surprise
that something is wrong
that you don't know how to live
and you will never know”