You want to read a book? That requires introspection. It requires time away from people and time away from the constant need to communicate and to connect.

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.

Without ‘Gnan’ (True Knowledge of the Self), desire(s) will not go away.

But I hasten to finish my story. Brevity is justified at once to those who readily understand, and to those who will never understand.

British democracy was not given by the elite. It was largely taken by the masses.

I had to inspect all fighter units in Russia, Africa, Sicily, France, and Norway. I had to be everywhere.

American politics is always somewhat fluid. In this age of social media, it means that voters can swing back and forth.

To the generality of men you cannot give a stronger hint for them to impose upon you than by imposing upon yourself.

the giver measures his gift with one yardstick, and the receiver measures it with another.

I want to see my kids for dinner, I want to put them down at night, I want to see their soccer games after school.

I could tell you stories-if only stories could tell what I have in me to tell.

Whenever you define who you are, you limit yourself to what you may potentially be.