I'm Jewish and my wife isn't so right now we're literally decorating a Christmas tree with Jewish stars draped around it.

I find in working always the disturbing intrusion of elements not a part of my most interested vision and the inevitable obliteration and replacement of this vision by the work itself as it proceeds.

God has ways of shaking the world when He is at work. He literally caused the ground to quake when Jesus died on the cross.

Only the most unapologetic biblical fundamentalists for instance take every biblical injunction literally. If we all took all scripture at the same level of authority then we would be more open to slavery to the subjugation of women to wider use of stoning. Jesus himself spoke out frequently against divorce in the strongest of terms.

My favorite play in drama school was 'The Bacchae.' It's about a king who literally gets eaten alive by all the women in the play in a kind of orgy - it's related to the word 'bacchanal' - and I loved that idea of animalistic chaos and following our own desires.

I left school at 16 but I wish I'd gone to university - I think I would have studied English literature. I had a knack for that. But I don't think you have the kind of wisdom at 16 to make that decision.

Wisdom finds its literary expression in wisdom literature.

It was only literally hours after the wedding when he felt he didn't have to keep up the facade.

I want to wage war against illiteracy poverty unemployment unfair competition communitarianism delinquency.

Fiction is a kind of compassion-generating machine that saves us from sloth. Is life kind or cruel? Yes Literature answers. Are people good or bad? You bet says Literature. But unlike other systems of knowing Literature declines to eradicate one truth in favor of another.