Quote

I'm Russian Jewish. And I had to grow up really quickly.

Yiddish, originally, in Eastern Europe was considered the language of children, of the illiterate, of women. And 500 years later, by the 19th century, by the 18th century, writers realized that, in order to communicate with the masses, they could no longer write in Hebrew. They needed to write in Yiddish, the language of the population.

Well, I like how people talk. I like language. You know, Linda Richman spoke in Yiddish.

After the turmoil of the Second World War, my family ended up in Russian-occupied East Germany. When I attended fourth grade, I had to learn Russian as my first foreign language in school. I found this quite difficult because of the Cyrillic alphabet, but as time went on, I seemed to do all right.

The more languages you know, the less likely you are to become a terrorist.

I am of the international upper class, the Swedish petit bourgeoisie of Jewish extraction with poor language skills, a conveyor of a few expressions and faces, with some intonation that combines ancient human experience with timely coquetry.

I've lived for 10 years in Switzerland, so I speak German.

Language is the friendliest of the things from which we cannot escape.

My father who in this case was an obsessive life-long storyteller, and by a very peculiar trick of my father's. My father would tell a very, very long story, and the punch line would be in Yiddish.