She extended a hand that I didn't know how to take, so I broke its fingers with my silence.

But what she was really trying to say was this: I like music better than anything in the world, after you.

Sadness of love without release.

I shook my tambourine the whole time, because it helped me remember that even though I was going through different neighborhoods, I was still me.

I wish my days could be washed away like the chalk lines of my days.

I am always sad, I think. Perhaps this signifies that I am not sad at all, because sadness is something lower than your normal disposition, and I am always the same thing. Perhaps I am the only person in the world, then, who never becomes sad. Perhaps I am lucky.

The disgraced Usurer Yankel D took the baby girl home that evening... He made a bed of crumpled newspaper in a deep baking pan and gently tucked it in the oven, so that she wouldn't be disturbed by the noise of the small falls outside... When he pulled her out to feed her or just hold her, her body was tattooed with the newsprint... Sometimes he would rock her to sleep in his arms, and read her left to right, and know everything he needed to know about the world. If it wasn't written on her, it wasn't important to him.