Highs and lows make you feel that things matter, but they're nothing." "So what's something?" "Being reliable is something. Being good.

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.

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

Marriage is like a chess match is initiated and the board expands over time until it takes up all of a life.

She said, "Do you have more things that you need, or more that you don't need?" I said, "It depends on what it means to need.

I thought about all of the things that everyone ever says to each other, and how everyone is going to die, whether it's in a millisecond, or days, or months, or 76.5 years, if you were just born. Everything that's born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but they're all on fire, and we're all trapped.

The bruises go away, and so does how you hate, and so does the feeling that everything you receive from life is something you have earned.