Rain is used as white noise when God is disgusted by too much prayer, when the sky is stuffed to bursting with the noise of what people need.

Judaism to me, as badly as I practiced it, what I've always loved about it was its total embrace of complexity, its admission of unknowability.

A misspelled word is probably an alias for some desperate call for aid, which is bound to fail.

My parents showed me by example that they could balance their work and family lives.

I love the way dates in a text make us think that truth will follow.

Fiction becomes a place where I face certain fears such as losing language or losing my children.

I work a lot in the summers. My family goes to Maine, where we have a little house. My wife's a writer, too, and we can write for six hours a day and then play with the kids.