The more you love someone, he came to think, the harder it is to tell them. It surprised him that strangers didn’t stop each other on the street to say I love you.
We are lying to ourselves and to each other. Lying about what? I don’t care if we’re lying. I am a bad person. I don’t care. I don’t care what you are.
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.
Thanksgiving is the holiday that encompasses all others. All of them, from Martin Luther King Day to Arbor Day to Christmas to Valentine’s Day, are in one way or another about being thankful.
I dreamt four nights ago of clock hands descending from the universe like rain, of the moon as a green eye, of mirrors and insects, of a love that never withdrew. It was not the feeling of completeness that I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.
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.
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.
