The books could be completely worthless, and things we don't even read now could be considered the most important books.

I could not believe in a God that would challenge faith like this.

I always write out of a need to read something, rather than a need to write something.

It made me start to wonder if there were other people so lonely so close. I thought about “Eleanor Rigby.” It’s true, where do they all come from? And where do they all belong?

It’s much easier to be cruel than one might think.

It was inevitable: Yankel fell in love with his never-wife. He would wake from sleep to miss the weight that never depressed the bed next to him, remember in earnest the weight of gestures she never made, long for the un-weight of her un-arm slung over his too-real chest, making his widower's rememberences that much more convincing and his pain that much more real.

We could imagine all sorts of universes unlike this one, but this is the one that happened.