Love consists in leaving the loved one space to be themselves while providing the security within which that self may flourish.
We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth.
Unlike memory, which confirms and reinforces itself, history contributes to the disenchantment of the world.
Judaism for me is a sensibility of collective self-questioning and uncomfortable truth-telling. I feel a debt of responsibility to this past. It is why I am Jewish.
The people whose necks hurt when I write about the Middle East tend to live in Brooklyn or Boca Raton: the kind of Zionist who pays another man to live in Israel for him. I have nothing but contempt for such people.
We are not merely historians but also and always citizens.
As citizens of a free society, we have a duty to look critically at our world. But if we think we know what is wrong, we must act upon that knowledge.
History can show you that it was one pile of bad stuff after another. It can also show you that there’s been tremendous progress in knowledge, behaviour, laws, civilisation. It cannot show you that there was a meaning behind it.
I’m not sure I’ve learned anything new about life; but I’ve had to think harder about death and what comes after for other people.
I’ve lost count of the interviews I’ve done about my illness and its relationship to my ideas and writing.
It does irritate me when I am described as a controversialist and commentator on Israel.
I don’t believe that one should have one-size-fits-all moral rules for international political action.
I know exactly how and where I am going to die. The only question is when.
I grew up in a world where the social democratic state was the norm, not the exception.