Jewish prayers are mostly about daily things - the sliver of a new moon, dew on the grass, the bread and the wine.

To know a man's library is, in some measure, to know a man's mind.

A book is more than the sum of its materials. It is an artifact of the human mind and hand.

There are always a few who stand up in times of communal madness and have the courage to say that what unites us is greater than what divides us.

She was like a butterfly, full of color and vibrancy when she chose to open her wings, yet hardly visible when she closed them.

I'm a praying atheist. When I hear an ambulance siren, I ask for a blessing for those people in trouble, knowing that no one's listening. I think it's just a habit of mindfulness.

The brave man, the real hero, quakes with terror, sweats, feels his very bowels betray him, and in spite of this moves forward to do the act he dreads.

It is human nature to imagine, to put yourself in another's shoes. The past may be another country. But the only passport required is empathy.

Book burnings. Always the forerunners. Heralds of the stake, the ovens, the mass graves.

Who is the brave man--he who feels no fear? If so, then bravery is but a polite term for a mind devoid of rationality and imagination.

You go on. You set one foot in front of the other, and if a thin voice cries out, somewhere behind you, you pretend not to hear, and keep going.

There's one country that can be trusted to understand the complexity of history, it's Nigeria.

Nothing spoils a confession like repentance.

To write is to think, and to write well is to think well.

Knowledge isn't power, applied knowledge is power

I've become to realize there's a world of difference between knowing something happened, even knowing why it happened, and believing it.

It's jam every other day: to-day isn't any other day, you know.

Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.

Birth control that really works - every night before we go to bed we spend an hour with our kids.

Art is a form of consciousness.

It's hard to be optimistic when you have a misty optic.