If you stop thinking, if you stop wondering, you die.

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.

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.

Michigan, with its delicious American name. How lucky one must be to live there.

Every challenge you encounter in life is a fork in the road. You have the choice to choose which way to go - backward, forward, breakdown or breakthrough.

Life made you get your hands dirty

since words are all we have of wings.

If we had a penny for each time God smiled at us, we would all be billionaires.

You don't have any weaknesses.""I have one." He glanced at her.

God gives every bird its food, but He does not throw it into its nest.

I like the idea of infiltrating an area that is not really exposed to me or my work.

To me the purpose of life is to enjoy it! It's to enjoy the gift, and to make sure that other people have an opportunity to enjoy the gift.

Everything that is necessary is also easy. You just have to accept it. And the most necessary, the most natural matter on this planet is death.

I've nothing against anyone following their dreams - but not if they're crap.