In the water I saw my father's face, and that face saw the face of its father, and so on, and so on, reflecting backward to the beginning of time, to the face of God, in whose image we were created.

I love sushi, I love fried chicken, I love steak. But there is a limit to my love.

The only thing more painful than being an active forgetter is to be an inert rememberer.

One of the greatest opportunities to live our values-or betray them-lies in the food we put on our plates.

Every night before putting her to sleep, Yankel counts her ribs, as if one might have disappeared in the course of the day and become the seed and soil for some new companion to steal her away from him.

Memories are small prayers to God, if we believed in that sort of thing.

Because it was starting to get dark, and because the streets were crowded, I bumped into a googolplex people. Who were they? Where were they going? What were they looking for? I wanted to hear their heartbeats, and I wanted them to hear mine.