When a shy person smiles, it’s like the sun coming out.

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.

You are limitless! Accept this truth and soar to infinity.

France is delighted at this new opportunity to show the world ... that when one has the will one can succeed in joining peoples who have been brought close by history.

I think today we recognize that economic activity needs to search for ways to protect the environment.

I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me.

Knowledge is a comfortable and necessary retreat and shelter for us in an advanced age; and if we do not plant it while young, it will give us no shade when we grow old.

The world is but a perpetual see-saw.

My end goal in the piano is to play Scott Joplin's 'Maple Leaf Rag.

Surgery is the red flower that blooms among the leaves and thorns that are the rest of medicine.

Questions of natural right are triable by their conformity with the moral sense and reason of man.

I'm a black man in the United States of America, so I always feel like there's a target on me.