"I have never tired of watching this film over the decades, ever since it premiered on TV in 1955, the same day of its theatrical release. Richard III is the greatest character the world’s greatest writer ever created, and this is his best play, and the greatest heroic performance ever given by the greatest English-speaking actor, Laurence Olivier, perfectly directed by the actor with a superb supporting cast and a fantastic score by Sir William Walton. It’s quite an achievement in every possible way. From his first appearance in the part on the London stage in 1944, it was acknowledged as the greatest Shakespearean performance anyone had ever seen, and it seems destined to remain that, thanks to this great film"

"Essentially an autobiography tracing the author’s own family’s move from Europe to what is now Israel and the disappointment of immigration. His mother killed herself, and he’s spent much of his life creating scenarios of why that happened. The process of meditating on her life makes him into a writer. The book is also about the birth of a language. He talks about his great-uncle, who was one of the architects of modern Hebrew, and how there didn’t used to be a word for shirt until he created it, because Hebrew had been a biblical language. It’s so interesting to think about what comes before the process of naming something—how you struggle when you don’t have the words to say what you feel."