I don't believe that there is anyone of faith whose faith would not be strengthened by those experiences of family.

I tend to find the ecstasy hidden in ordinary joys, because I did not expect those joys to be ordinary to me.

Mild depression is a gradual and sometimes permanent thing that undermines people the way rust weakens iron ... Like physical pain that becomes chronic, it is miserable not so much because it is intolerable in the moment as because it is intolerable to have known it in the moments gone and to look forward only to knowing it in the moments to come.

I'd had a vaguely Jewish upbringing, but no deep connection to faith.

I believe very deeply that this beauty I call the soul is not a random occurrence. I don't know what its meaning is at some larger level, but I know that it has meaning.

Any community that remains an abstraction is an easy target for prejudice and cruelty, but any community that becomes fully humanized is much harder to treat in that way.

Parenthood abruptly catapults us into a permanent relationship with a stranger.