The secret was a hole in the middle of me that every happy thing fell into.

I ran rather than walked, anxious to lose my way. All I wanted was to be unsure.

Only humans can cry tears.

Food serves two parallel purposes: it nourishes and it helps you remember. Eating and storytelling are inseparable-the saltwater is also tears; the honey not only tastes sweet, but makes us think of sweetness; the matzo is the bread of our affliction.

So she had to satisfy herself with the idea of love - loving the loving of things whose existence she didn't care at all about. Love itself became the object of her love. She loved herself in love, she loved loving love, as love loves loving, and was able, in that way, to reconcile herself with a world that fell so short of what she would have hoped for. It was not the world that was the great and saving lie, but her willingness to make it beautiful and fair, to live a once-removed life, in a world once-removed from the one in which everyone else seemed to exist.

Being with him made my brain quiet. I didn't have to invent a thing.

Words are capable of making experience more vivid, and also of organizing it. They can scare us, and they can comfort us.