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.

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.

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.

Michigan, with its delicious American name. How lucky one must be to live there.

Flaming enthusiasm, backed by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.

The remarkable thing is, we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day.

My Friend is that one whom I can associate with my choicest thought.

I regard the writing of humor as a supreme artistic challenge.

It is not the insurrections of ignorance that are dangerous, but the revolts of the intelligence.

Dogs want only love but cats demand worship.

I'd love to design my own swim collection for them (VS)... Heidi (Klum) does the lipsticks, I would love to one day do the bikinis.

No great saint lived without errors.

Very little grows on jagged rock. Be ground. Be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are.

I'm not a citizen of America, I cannot vote. But it is fascinating because there's a new kind of protagonist out there that we didn't expect. By the way, I'm not in any panic at all.