I write almost entirely in bed or on a couch with my feet up on the coffee table. I feel most creative when Im looking out the window, and my bed and couch have nice views of the New York skyline.

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.

I never swear, Monseigneur. I say Yes or No, and as I am a gentleman, I keep my word.

If you think you are unworthy to pray, that thought is not coming from Jesus Christ. More than anything, He wants us to approach Heavenly Father, to have our prayers heard and answered.

If you want to love a parent you have to understand the incredible investment he or she has in you. If you are a parent, and you want to be loved, you have to deserve it.

how I wish I could fist a bit of old-fashioned beef in the fore-castle, as I used to when i was before the mast.

If we all make a concerted effort and try to improve the life of someone else, then this world would be a better place to live in.

I've taken a certain a pride in all of my books. They devour so much time and energy that you have to engage deeply or you'd go mad.

Reapportionment is not friendly to a lot of communities and it hasn't been too friendly to mine.

I try to give myself passionately, totally, to whatever I'm observing, with as much affectionate curiosity as I can muster, as a means of understanding a little better what being human is.

I started to see that my concept of spirituality was totally wrong.

I find it's a very positive movement and something you can do every day in little ways. Our philosophy on the website (www.greenissexy.org) is not to have green guilt, do what you can.