American fiction is good. It would be nice if somebody read it.

Reading is entering into the consciousness of another human being.

The love I felt for her on that train ride had a capital and provinces, parishes and a Vatican, an orange planet and many sullen moons -- it was systemic and it was complete.

If you stop thinking, if you stop wondering, you die.

The fading light is us, and we are, for a moment so brief (...) beautiful.

Good fiction makes me turn off all the other parts of my brain, so that I become quiet and submissive, entirely at the mercy of the work at hand.

She took my hand and pulled me after her, her shoulders giving off a sweet peppermint concoction that the bodies of young women sometimes produce to make my life more difficult.

If my mother hadn't tried to sell me chicken Kiev cutlets for $1.40 after I graduated from college, maybe I would've been the lawyer she wanted me to be.

You are not what you want. You are what wants you back.

Forget the fountain of youth, pal of mine. You can live to be a thousand, and it won't matter. Mediocrities like you deserve immortality.

If you read only one memoir by a disaffected, urban, 20-something Jewish girl this year, make it this one. Shukert rocks the lulav.

There is enough heartache and sorrow in this life without our adding to it through our own stubbornness, bitterness, and resentment.

On my mom's side I'm Mexican, and my dad is a white dude.

I wanted to become a model and an actress.

It is crucial for the future of the Black liberation struggle that we remain ever mindful that ours is a shared struggle, that we are each other's fate.

It's very odd, being older, because in a way it's hard to own the past, even.

I was asked once,'your a smart man,why arnt you rich?I replied 'your a rich man,why arnt you smart?

Your children teach you so much. It's a real mirror of yourself.

A true leader doesn't just bring troubles; but bring solutions.

The faults of husbands are often caused by the excess virtues of their wives.

I will just take the chance that the language will still be relevant in 100 years, which is something we cannot take for granted with a language that is spoken by 330,000 people.