I think it's a greater risk not to write about 9\11. If you're in my position - a New Yorker who felt the event very deeply and a writer who wants to write about things he feels deeply about - I think it's risky to avoid what's right in front of you.

People hurt each other. That's what people do.

I thought, it's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life, because if I'd had two lives, I would have spent one of them with her.

Humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with lips. So in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are. And the more you wage war.

There are still many different ways to get stuck, existentially stuck. Feeling like, "This is worthless. I'm wasting my time, and I would be wasting the time of someone who tried to read this." It happens all the time.

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

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.