There is no end to the promotion. There is no end to the possibilities. You can continue to promote a book for years, literally.

I think so much about how we read, about the nature of solitude, and of community, is changing in ways that none of us yet understand.

As a fiction writer, that's been a preoccupation of mine: Can you really just close the door and leave the past back there behind you, or is the door going to blow open at some point?

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.

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

Let me tell you something about hypochondria: It's a pernicious, undermining little demon. It won't kill you, but it will sap the color from your life so that in the loveliest moments, the moments of grace, you are hit with that whisper in your ear that takes it all away. I'm sick, I'm dying - I just don't know it yet.

We can't protect ourselves from pain and heartache.