All Beginnings Are Hard.

Two Hundred Or More Years Ago Most People On The Planet Were Never Aware Of Any Reality Other Than The One Into Which They Were Brought Up.

I Think That To A Very Great Extent We Are Partners With The Divine In This Enterprise Called History. That Is An Ongoing Relationship, And There Is Absolutely No Guarantee That Things Will Automatically Work Out To Our Best Advantage.

My Name Is Asher Lev... I Am A Traitor, An Apostate, A Self-hater, An Inflicter Of Shame Upon My Family, My Friends, My People; Also, I Am A Mocker Of Ideas Sacred To Christians, A Blasphemous Manipulator Of Modes And Forms Revered By Gentiles For Two Thousand Years.

A Non-fiction Writer Pretty Much Has The Shape Of The Figure In Front Of Him Or Her And Goes About Refining It. A Work Of Non-fiction Is Not As Difficult To Write As A Work Of Fiction, But It's Not As Satisfying In The End.

To The Extent That I Come From A Deeply Religious Tradition And Have Been Contending With Those Beginnings All Of My Life - That Constitutes The Subject Of Much Of My Early Fiction.