Michael Lowenthal has written a big-hearted and wise book about familial love in all its richness and complexity.

I never troll for material. It simply presents itself, and is always unmistakable. This is why I want to roll my eyes when people interrupt themselves in the middle of some story they're telling me to say, "You know you can't write about this."

In every generation there is a vault-keeper, one who guards the links fiercely and knows they are more precious than rubies.

When I started meditating, even doing yoga, I felt like it was hard to allow myself to develop any other kind of practice [outside of Judaism], like I was somehow being untrue to my heritage, and that was something I had to get over and was probably the greatest revelation to me.

I do strongly identify with being Jewish. I was raised Orthodox and had a childhood complicated by the fact that my father was deeply religious and my mother was not.

Part of my spiritual work is learning to live with the knowledge that we can't protect our loved ones from pain and heartache.

As writers, it is our job not only to imagine, but to witness.