The painful things seemed like knots on a beautiful necklace, necessary for keeping the beads in place.

Since 1985, I have written about contemporary Jewish practice and the Jewish community.

The Sabbath is a weekly cathedral raised up in my dining room, in my family, in my heart.

I got nice rejections explaining that historical fiction was a difficult sell. But I kept trying.

Why did I not know that birth is the pinnacle where women discover the courage to become mothers?

The more a daughter knows the details of her mother's life [...] the stronger the daughter.

One of his tears fell in my mouth, where it became a blue sapphire, source of strength, source of strength and eternal hope.

I tell writers to keep reading, reading, reading. Read widely and deeply. And I tell them not to give up even after getting rejection letters. And only write what you love.

My husband, Jim, converted to Judaism just before our wedding.

One of my great secrets was knowing I had the power to make her smile.

The more I do bookstores, the more people come up to me from church groups. I spoke at Pittsburg State College and had 2 or 3 ministers and book groups from a couple of churches.

Self-improvement is generally a removal of a vice rather than an acquisition of a virtue.

Communication must be HOT: honest, open, and two-way.

If I could have all of those things, I wouldn't mind if I touched her or not.

It’s not my fault that these are the problems I’ve been put on this earth to deal with, right? They’re petty, they piss me off, and they’re all mine

Active listening requires being fully present and engaged in the moment.

The worker-mother must learn not to differentiate between yours and mine; she must remember that there are only our children, the children of Russia’s communist workers.

By His trials, God means to purify us, to take away all our self-confidence, and our trust in each other, and bring us into implicit, humble trust in Himself.

Perfection irritates as well as it attracts, in fiction as in life.

But the power of science lies in open publication, which, with the rise of the Internet, is no longer constrained by the price of paper.

Envy, though not the greatest sin, is the only one that gives the sinner no pleasure at all, not even fake and temporary satisfaction.