Here we are, alive, and you and I will have to make it what we can.

When you're writing non-fiction, you go as far as you can go, and then ethically you have to stop. You can't go. You can't suppose. You can't imagine. And I think there's something in human nature that wants to finish the story.

And when I'd be reporting in Israel, Palestinians would say, the Jews they're not like us, and the Jews would say the same things about the Palestinians, they don't want what we want. And I never bought it as a reporter and I don't buy it as a novelist. I think, you know, the sound of somebody crying for their lost child sounds the same.

I'm a praying atheist. When I hear an ambulance siren, I ask for a blessing for those people in trouble, knowing that no one's listening. I think it's just a habit of mindfulness.

They say the Lord's Day is a day of rest, but those who preach this generally are not women.

Both my parents loved words. That was the big deal in our house.

For most people, chemotherapy is no longer the chamber of horrors we often conceive it to be. Yes, it is an ordeal for some people, but it wasn't for me, nor for most of the patients I got to know during my four months of periodic visits to the chemo suite.