“I'm from the West – I don’t trifle with people, and I won't be trifled with. I don't care if you're a president, general, prime minster, et cetera.”

“We're all of value. If a 15-year-old kid writes with a question or comment, you should take it seriously and respond.”

“It's not about learning jiujitsu, it’s about learning how to learn jiujitsu. The real lesson is if you can put in enough time to be very competent at this very hard thing that you could put in time at just about anything and be good at it.”

“I sing along a lot. First off, I like to sing; the Jewish liturgy is full of evocations to sing to the Lord, as this is something that befits our Creator, and maybe enriches our own religious experience.”

“Everybody has a fantasy about what happens after treatment, but most people don't want to know you after treatment.”

“As cheesy as it sounds, I try and tell myself to really just have fun and make myself laugh, and that will translate to good vibes for the crowd.”

“I came to the strong opinion that money was actually the central issue here and that if you're going to have a market-based system, a capitalist system, the most important thing in that system to be market-based was money itself.”

“But it’s the most satisfying thing to get the computer to do exactly what you want it to do.”

“One day in the hospital, I heard ‘West End Blues’ on the radio, and it just got to me. It seemed to me it contained within it a lifetime’s worth of sadness and joy in just three minutes.”

“I have actually trained men to fight in war, and I have sat them down and made them watch Seven Samurai, and they complained a lot. Then a few of them wanted to see it again.”

“I would think that some top chess players are interested in ideas, and ‘great writings,’ but not all. You have to be monomaniacal and really focused on your chess if you want to reach the top.”

“I really admire the way those two countries – France and Japan – resist the homogenization of modern culture. They just so fiercely – probably not successfully – seek to preserve their uniqueness. I find that struggle heroic in a weird way.”

“I like to think that I like trying new things. Most of my research has been on the mind, and everything is fodder to the mind on how we perceive things, how we create things, how we put them out into the world.”

“When I lived in New York, I felt a lot of my friends who were real New Yorkers from the old Downtown Scene – many of us were from Jersey. There's just something about the periphery of an area that makes it kind of weird and more hardcore and different.”

“You never knew what was gonna happen when you got on the subway – sort of like what's happening right now. There's a lot of things that are coming back.”

“If you go in and say a vort and you just speak some Torah, they’ll give you a free dessert.”

“I’ll never own a piece of physical art.”

“If I could interview any one person, it would be Abraham Lincoln. He was in my view, the greatest American.”

“My screen time is probably my biggest weakness or most embarrassing thing about me.”

“Just remember, for every 6 million fifth graders, there are between two and five who know who Roy Eldridge is. Getting the word out is not an easy task, but good for you. Enjoy jazz. Jazz is great.”