Quote

All sorts of other lies are being spread today, I do not know what else they will invent. I've heard that I'm of Jewish descent, but I found, I knew of my ancestors in Zagorje from around 350 years ago, and I said, maybe it would be good to have some of that, I guess I would be richer, I might not have become a Communist.

Bigger stories are made out of longer acquaintance with fact and character, but I also love the tiny stories in which almost everything has to be inferred and imagined.

If I can tell someone a story that makes them bend over and laugh, that's bigger than anything else.

I guess everything having to do with your background has some influence on how you tell stories but it's hard to parse how growing up in a Jewish community in Minnesota really affected it.

I understood when I was quite small that there were two special things about the Jews. That we'd endured for over 3,000 years despite everything that had been thrown at us, and that we had an extraordinarily dramatic story to tell.

The problem is Jewish-American fiction that always ends with assimilation back into the community.

Whatever story you want to tell, tell it at the right size.

We're always just telling stories, and stories are always just approximations of the truth. It's never the truth exactly.

I'm Jewish, I can say it. We're storytellers. We were the moneylenders... Therefore we tell great tales to get what we need. I love Jewish men. They make the best husbands.