It would be refreshing to have a politician try to defend guns without any reference to the Second Amendment, but on the merits of guns.

Which, then, brings us closer to what we want to communicate: saying what we intend, or trying to say the opposite?

I would have done anything for him. Maybe that was my sickness.

Most of the times that I think about my relationship to Judaism, I not only accuse myself of a shallowness, but I feel certain that there's a shallowness there. That's not a bad thing, really.

He was someone whom everyone admired and liked but whom nobody knew. He was like a book that you could feel good holding, that you could talk about without ever having read, that you could recommend.

As a writer, putting words on the page is how I pay attention.

Feathers filled the small room. Our laughter kept the feathers in the air. I thought about birds. Could they fly is there wasn't someone, somewhere, laughing?