Before my first novel, I was dating a woman who later went to prison for bashing a guy with a hammer.

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.

Well... "why" is a hard question to answer in any language.

[T]o really try to be informed and literate today is to feel stupid nearly all the time, and to need help.

Start seeing yourself as God sees you, see yourself through God’s eyes

For an animal person, an animal-less home is no home at all.

In the original script, my character was a basketball player rather than a boxer. I didn't think I could pull that off. I'm a little short to be a basketball player!

Being a mother is the most fun job I've ever had.

I was given a talent to play cricket. I don't know why I was given it. But I was. I owe it to all those who wish it had been them to give of my best, every day.

Envy is the tax which all distinction must pay.

Nobody drowns by falling in the water...but by staying there.

There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.