I no longer believe that just about everything is funny, if viewed from the proper angle.

Maybe that's what we look for in the people we love, the spark of unhappiness we think we know how to extinguish.

When things don't go well, it helps to think of yourself as a genius and the rest of the world as a bunch of idiots.

Every minute we were together, I felt like I was wandering in the dark through a strange house, groping for a light switch. And then, whenever I found one and turned it on, the bulb was dead.

Sooner or later we all lose our loved ones. We all have to suffer, every last one of us.

I read 'The Great Gatsby' in high school and was hypnotized by the beauty of the sentences and moved by the story about the irrevocability of lost love.

Once you'd broken through that invisible barrier that separates one person from another, you were connected forever, whether you liked it or not.

It just took some people a little longer than others to realize how few words they needed to get by, how much of life they could negotiate in silence.

Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they'd ruined, got a little stale after a while.

I don't really distinguish between sympathy and honesty when I'm writing. The two go together - I'm interested in inhabiting my characters, seeing the world through their eyes.

He made me think of all the books I hadn't read, and all the ones I'd read but hadn't fully understood.

In a tough situation, don't avoid acting just because it's easier or comfortable. Don't lapse into a passive state. People who give up, die.

Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed.

You don't know anything about pain until you've seen your own baby drowned in a tub... and you definitely don't know anything about how to wash a baby.

Faith, indeed, has up to the present not been able to move real mountains, although I do not know who assumed that it could. But it can put mountains where there are none.

Reform Judaism is like mock turtle soup-turtle soup without the turtle

Please do not put earthly expectations on a heavenly experience.

I watch so much television, it's embarrassing.

I know not whether Laws be right, Or whether Laws be wrong; All that we know who be in jail Is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, A year whose days are long.

I'm compelled and dedicated to transmitting emotions and I care for very little else.

Wealth and honor, benefits and blessings shall enrich my life; poverty and failures, grief and anxiety shall help fulfill it. In my life, I will serve heaven and earth; in death I will find peace.