There's something almost adolescent about Whitman's paean to everything that was and remains good about America.

Since 1985, I have written about contemporary Jewish practice and the Jewish community.

The Sabbath is a weekly cathedral raised up in my dining room, in my family, in my heart.

I got nice rejections explaining that historical fiction was a difficult sell. But I kept trying.

Why did I not know that birth is the pinnacle where women discover the courage to become mothers?

The painful things seemed like knots on a beautiful necklace, necessary for keeping the beads in place.

The more a daughter knows the details of her mother's life [...] the stronger the daughter.

One of his tears fell in my mouth, where it became a blue sapphire, source of strength, source of strength and eternal hope.

I tell writers to keep reading, reading, reading. Read widely and deeply. And I tell them not to give up even after getting rejection letters. And only write what you love.

My husband, Jim, converted to Judaism just before our wedding.

One of my great secrets was knowing I had the power to make her smile.

In this instant of danger they realized they were each other's reason for living, and into this instant they threw their whole being.

Why then you're as mad as me. No, madder. For I distrust 'reality' and its moron mother, the universe, while you fasten your innocence to fallible devices which pretend at happy endings.

When I play discos in Belfast or freshers' week in Oxford, there are 1, 800 kids dressed as me. It's odd, it's funny, and it pays really well.

Everywhere, authority and tradition have to justify themselves in the face of questions.

To make sense to us as physical creatures, any 'truth' must undergo transformations, be couched in certain terms or we couldn't understand it.

I was going to go to church, but I decided to get doughnuts instead.

My first dunk ever was in middle school. We were playing, me and my church friends, and I dunked it, and I swear I could not sleep that night.

The human race will be the cancer of the planet.

I don't know if that comes in a number, I don't know if that comes in a plaque, I don't know what it is. If I can keep me and the crew around me happy, stable, and out of jail, then we good.

O lovely chance, what can I doTo give my gratefulness to you?You rise between myself and meWith a wise persistency;I would have broken body and soul,But by your grace, still I am whole.