“I think and think and think, I‘ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.”

Feathers filled the small room. Our laughter kept the feathers in the air. I thought about birds. Could they fly is there wasn’t someone, somewhere, laughing?

Cruelty depends on an understanding of cruelty, and the ability to choose against it. Or to choose to ignore it.

Once you hear something, you can never return to the time before you heard it.

Everything that’s born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but they’re all on fire, and we’re all trapped.

When I looked at you, my life made sense. Even the bad things made sense. They were necessary to make you possible.

Most of the times that I think about my relationship to Judaism, I not only accuse myself of a shallowness, but I feel certain that there’s a shallowness there. That’s not a bad thing, really.

Why didn’t I learn to treat everything like it was the last time. My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future.

I don’t think that there are any limits to how excellent we could make life seem.

Feeding my children is not like feeding myself: it matters more.

I can forgive you for leaving, but not for coming back.

He was someone whom everyone admired and liked but whom nobody knew. He was like a book that you could feel good holding, that you could talk about without ever having read, that you could recommend.

What does it remember like?

I took the world into me, rearranged it, and sent it back out as a question: “Do you like me?

Fiction works when it makes a reader feel something strongly.

We shared the smile of recognizing ourselves in each other, how many imposters do I have? Do we all make the same mistakes, or has one of us gotten it right, or even just a bit less wrong, am I the imposter?

My wife and I have chosen to bring up our children as vegetarians. In another time or place, we might have made a different decision. But the realities of our present moment compelled us to make that choice.