My mother cranes her neck. Her ability to be fascinated by things is her best gift to me.

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.

She may have been the one whose name meant music, but his sounded like it. Saying it made her want to sing it, to lean out a window and call him home. To whisper it in the dark.

My mom and my dad was the best example of unconditional love I could see as a kid. I've known it my whole life. Interactions, kissing, hugging - it definitely wasn't the fake love.

I wasn’t like 'Oh, I'm going to marry 50 Cent...' I mean, seriously. But I did like him. He's very sweet and antithetical to what you'd think of him.

I wonder why it is, that young men are always cautioned against bad girls. Anyone can handle a bad girl. It's the good girls men should be warned against.

If we succeed, it makes no sense to keep it only for ourselves.

Prayer that craves a particular commodity, anything less than all good, is vicious.

I might wear my pink Speedo. I think I should.

When thou hast profited so much that thou respectest even thyself, thou mayst let go thy tutor.

So when your mom walks in, turn down the volume and act like you're doing your homework.

You don't want to get stuck with a record that you've done with someone that you feel obligated to put out - that's not really dope, just because you made an effort to get together and work.