My test for writing is always, is this fun or does it feel like a job? Is it moving me? Or am I just fulfilling my own expectations - or even worse, somebody else's?

My greatest fear is feeling like a professional novelist. Somebody who creates characters, who sits down and has pieces of paper taped to the wall - what's going to happen in this scene, or this act. What I like is for it to be a much more scary, sloppy reflection of who I am.

We were quiet on the car ride home. I turned on the radio and found a station playing "Hey Jude." It was true, I didn't want to make it bad. I wanted to take the sad song and make it better. It's just that I didn't know how.

Or maybe what he fears is just the opposite: that nobody is looking; that his death, like his life, is without purpose; that there is neither greater good nor evil--only people living and dying because their bodies function and then do not; that the universe is a rip.

I am not a bad person. I am a good person who has lived in a bad time." Alex's grandfather..Everything is Illuminated

Things were happening around us, but nothing was happening between us.

I'm deeply curious about Jewish things. I've toyed around with the idea of going to rabbinical school.