I’ve had this concern all the time, but I can only hope that if one writes with appreciation and delicacy and respect, then it’s okay. I have to say that I’ve written a hundred times as much as I’ve published, because if there’s any thought of offense or embarrassment, then I will put the thing quietly away.

So we'd say things like, let's agree that you're going to sell 57 widgets per week. If you sell them by Wednesday, please go to the beach. Don't create a problem for us, for manufacturing, for application, then we have to buy new companies, we have to buy our competitors, we have to do all kinds of things because you sold too many widgets. So go to the beach and start again on Monday.

There are some things about being president that I still have difficulty doing. … For example, faking emotion. Because I feel it is an insult to the people I'm dealing with. For me to feign outrage, for example, feels to me like I'm not taking the American people seriously. I'm absolutely positive that I'm serving the American people better if I'm maintaining my authenticity. And that's an overused word. And these days people practice being authentic. But I'm at my best when I believe what I am saying.

It’s easy to try to exaggerate the problems just to get more attention. So for me, it was very clear that the best way to deal with that was to do the best science that I was capable of doing.

After the war — I was 15 when I entered the camp, I was 16 when I left it, and all of a sudden you become an orphan and you have no one. I had a little sister and I knew, with my mother the first night, that they were swept away by fire. My older sisters I discovered by accident after the war in Paris, where I was in an orphanage. But to be an orphan — you can become an orphan at 50, you are still an orphan. Very often I think of my father and my mother. At any important moment in my life, they are there, thinking, “What an injustice.”

Well, naturally, my grandfather. He was a Hasid, meaning a member of the Hasidic community, and I loved him, I adored him. So thanks to him, I became a Hasid too. And my mother — who actually continued his tradition — she’s the one who brought me to Hasidic Masters. And all the stories I tell now — I’ve written so many books with Hasidic tales — these are not mine, these are theirs, my mother’s and my grandfather’s. My father taught me how to reason, how to reach my mind. My soul belonged to my grandfather and my mother. They enriched me, of course. They influenced me profoundly, to this day. When I write, I have the feeling, literally, physically, that one of them is behind my back, looking over my shoulder and reading what I’m writing. I’m terribly afraid of their judgment.

I remember the awakening that occurred in me when I read, for the first time, Franz Kafka. ... That morning I was happy. I wanted to run out and embrace them, all these garbage collectors, because they taught me that there was another world than the world of Kafka, which is absurd and desperate, and despairing.

Sensitivity. Be sensitive in every way possible about everything in life. Be sensitive. Insensitivity brings indifference and nothing is worse than indifference. Indifference makes that person dead before the person dies.