If I still lived in Russia, I'd be dead... or a really effective oligarch.

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.

Never try to justify your failures based on your luck. You just didn’t work hard enough!

I'm always fighting the cup-is-half-empty way of being, versus the cup-is-half-full. I'm always fighting the pessimistic versus the positive.

The whole slacker generation totally didn't apply to us musically.

The more hideous the mental contortions, the greater the delight and bravos of the mass.

A good smile is the sunshine of wisdom.

I'm so much more than just Angelina [Jolie's] brother. I'm also Jon Voight's son and Billy Bob Thorton's brother-in-law.

While Socrates empties the cup of poison with unshaken soul,Christ exclaims,'If it is possible, let this cup pass from me'.Christ in this respect is the self- confession of human sensibility.

Marriage is such a mark of adulthood in my mind.

I think a lot of people dream. And while they are busy dreaming, the really happy people, the really successful people, the really interesting, engaged, powerful people, are busy doing.

Opportunities don't knock, they whisper. So shut up and listen.