I have my own dying empire to contend with, and I do not wish for any other.

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.

Something of God... flows into us from the blue of the sky, the taste of honey, the delicious embrace of water whether cold or hot, and even from sleep itself.

All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.

I heaved into being, came out of the stone, the bricks, and other elements, and took form. (Dark City Lights)

If I am through learning, I am through.

I had to work out that it was something that could move, without having everybody in spray painted leotards.

Dignity does not come from avenging insults, especially from violence that can never be justified. It comes from taking responsibility and advancing our common humanity.

Mitt Romney, both did better with the military than Donald [Trump].

Sometimes the only thing which truly tempts us is the thing which we cannot have.

One thing we can all control is effort

People are capable of doing an awful lot when they have no choice and I had no choice. Courage is when you have choices.