Remember this... develop a sense of nostalgia for something, or you'll never figure out what's important.

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.

If you don't mind them and accept that they don't like you, you'll see that you won't return the negativity.

Love is bold. Love is blind.

The great thing about taking big chances when you're younger is you have less to lose, and you don't know as much. So you take big swings.

...after a certain quantity, photos apparently taken by chance, postcards chosen according to a passing mood, begin to trace an itinerary, to map the imaginary country that stretches out before us.

For a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.

One of the most essential things you need to do for yourself is to choose a goal that is important to you. Perfection does not exist - you can always do better and you can always grow.

If not exactly raging against the dying of the light, I was at least a little cross with it.

Why take chances? It may be nonsense, but does anybody really know? And people have certainly been fascinated by astrology for thousands of years.

In a way, I think religion is to be admired for asking the right questions. I just think it's got the wrong answers.

I think for folks of color the key to combatting racism period is a) trusting their instincts and b) solidarity with one another.