I sense that what you two [Elie Wiesel and Frank Moore Cross] share is that you each have a public relationship to the Biblical text and a somewhat private relationship to the Biblical text.

We are thrown back on the text, for the most part. Archaeology can give us background. It doesn't either confirm or disprove the Bible, but it may illuminate it.

My own interest is far more in the Hebrew Bible. My religion is more personally related to the Hebrew Bible than it is to the New Testament.

The Garden of Eden presents the same story: If you want to make yourself gods, you'll find you're akin to the animals.

If one attempts to achieve deity or to have the holy, he is thrown back; he is refused. His language is taken from him. He can no longer even communicate. That's the Tower of Babel.

Israel defined its God and its relation to that God in existential, relational terms. They did not, until quite late, approach the question of one God in an abstract philosophical way.

I prefer to have all of this apparatus - historical, literary, critical - and then, beyond initial innocence and naiveté, to try to achieve a new innocence, a new naiveté.

I think we may very well, in many areas, get likelihood, but not certitude. We don't want certitude anyway, do we?

We want to live in ambiguity. This is the human condition.

There was certainly an old law code which stands behind the earliest form of Deuteronomy. Presumably that is what was lost.

With the Hebrew Bible, you're living in an austere world.

Passion is momentary love is enduring.

The eye and fantasy feel more attracted by nebulous distance than by that which is close and distinct in front of us.

I like Brando's acting ... and James Dean ... and Richard Widmark. Quite a few of 'em I like.

My wife thinks I'm very hot. She tells me that every couple weeks, especially when we go to the NCAA tournament and all the nice things come along with it.

I think Michigan keeps you sane and on an even keel through the ups and downs. In Michigan, I do fireworks, shovel snow and live life.

The Games have been decimated. If you take away the Eastern Bloc, you take away 50% of the medals

Romance without finance is a nuisance. Few men value free merchandise. Let the chippies fall where they may.

Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel-dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.

Let me ask you, do you love your freedom that you have here in America? Well, so do I.

People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events.