I have a great memory. And actually, I remember Russia in some ways better than I remember Queens.

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.

With Christ as your Savior and constant Companion, you, although alone, need never be lonely.

Poems are the chorus of our lives. the poet sets the words to the music of our souls. Each poem has its own rhythm that drums like a heartbeat.

Give us this day our daily bread.

Only mathematics and mathematical logic can say as little as the physicist means to say.

There are no social differences - till women come in.

A player you can buy in 24 hours, believe me. That's not a problem

Sheep, cattle, men-servants were all possessions to be sold as it pleased their masters. It were a good thing were it still so. For else no man may compel nor tame the servile folk.

We have a thousand points of light for the homeless man. We've got a kinder gentler machine gun hand.

You will always grow through - what you go through.