I am born hungry. Ravenous. I want to eat the world, and I can never be satiated.

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.

One should try to live with his abilities rather than his deprivals.

Have you ever noticed how the most intriguing individual in the room seems content to listen sooner than speak?

Storytelling is the very soul of humankind made plain for all to experience.

If I was going to act irresponsibly, the least I could do was be responsible for it.

I think lots of things, Denny, and I dismiss nothing. When I know, then I'll act.

She is too intelligent to be a good daughter-in-law

I am kind of a curmudgeonly person, so I don't gravitate to groups or traditions, which is probably just pretentious of me.

Not money, or success, or position or travel or love makes happiness,--service is the secret.

Ah, stardom! They put your name on a star in the sidewalk on Hollywood Boulevard and you walk down and find a pile of dog manure on it. That tells the whole story, baby.

She hasn't your strength. She's never had any strength. She's never had anything but heart.