Italy has sun and tomatoes, and Russia just has real problems.

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.

Only the weak invite their demons to live with them. Isn't that right?

May the Lord increase your strength.

Argument is meant to reveal the truth, not to create it.

Wisdom is meaningless until your own experience has given it meaning, and there is wisdom in the selection of wisdom.

Art is great only when it bears the stamp of the individual.

But I am influenced by the world that says I influence it. The world I live in is my influence.

Jason patted me on the back. “Tomorrow night we'll take you out chasing deer.” “I thought you'd chase cars,” I said. He grinned. “What fun is that? Cars don't bleed.

My biggest loss was the Olympics. I just can't forget losing. I never will

Everything you want and you don't have, you get from other people.

I did not pray Him to lay bare The mystery to me, Enough the rose was Heaven to smell, And His own face to see.