Communications devices were always used to effect change, to effect revolution. Telephone, telegraph - these all seemed like very big enhancements at the time.

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.

When they were silent for a moment the quiet weight of the house pressed down from all around them.

There are always a million words behind the silence.

Experience teaches you that the man who looks you straight in the eye, particularly if he adds a firm handshake, is hiding something.

Tell us your phobias and we will tell you what you are afraid of.

I was told I would be back in 90 days. If I listened to people, I would be back where I came from - the penitentiary.

I do think poetry needs to invite the reader, especially when there are so many other distractions while reading.

You are all stardust.

Second, a quarter to a third of those who listen to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are liberals.

I think we try to box and put God in some limited definition, which is impossible.

Once more you open the door and you're here in my heart, and my heart will go on and on.