I read with some amusement my reputation as a ladies' man. My friends are amused by that, too, because they know my life.

Torah values are the ones that inform my life.

I read autobiographies because there is too much fiction in my life.

Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That's how the light gets in.

Seven to eleven is a huge chunk of life, full of dulling and forgetting. It is fabled that we slowly lose the gift of speech with animals, that birds no longer visit our windowsills to converse. As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armor themselves against wonder.

As a young man, Yeats spoke to me in a way I could understand. Shakespeare I couldn't understand, but Yeats I could. It was his subject matter and also I really admired the way he put his personal life on the line.