“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.”

I shook my tambourine the whole time, because it helped me remember that even though I was going through different neighborhoods, I was still me.

We are not long-term beings. Not heroes of romances in many volumes. For one gesture, for one word alone, we shall make the effort. We openly admit: our creations will be temporary. We shall have this as our aim: a gesture.

Food serves two parallel purposes: it nourishes and it helps you remember. Eating and storytelling are inseparable-the saltwater is also tears; the honey not only tastes sweet, but makes us think of sweetness; the matzo is the bread of our affliction.

She was with me. She did all of those things and so many more, things I would never tell anyone, and she never even loved me. Now that’s love.

I tried the key in all the doors, even though he said he didn’t recognize it. It’s not that I didn’t trust him, becuase I did. It’s that at the end of my search I wanted to be able to say: I don’t know how I could have tried harder.

Just to be a functioning adult in the world, we develop all of these layers of protection. When we see homeless people, we don’t cry, even though homeless people probably deserve our tears – you know, it’s a horrible thing.

Memory was supposed to fill the time, but it made time a hole to be filled. Each second was two hundred yards, to be walked, crawled. You couldn’t see the next hour, it was so far in the distance. Tomorrow was over the horizon, and would take an entire day to reach.

I wasn’t having second thoughts, but I was having thoughts.

I imagine a line, a white line, painted on the sand and on the ocean, from me to you.

Every factory-farmed animal is, as a practice, treated in ways that would be illegal if it were a dog or a cat.

I never confused what I had with what I was.

Not responding is a response – we are equally responsible for what we don’t do.

The world is a big place,” he said, “but so is the inside of an apartment!

I was more alone than if I had been alone.

This is love, she thought, isn’t it? When you notice someone’s absence and hate that absence more than anything? More, even, than you love his presence?

I could not believe in a God that would challenge faith like this.