As long as I am thinking, I am alive.

If we communicated with something like music, we would never be misunderstood, because there is nothing in music to understand...... But until we find this new way of speaking, until we can find a nonapproximate vocabulary, nonsense words are the best thing we've got. Ifactifice is one such word.

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

She extended a hand that I didn't know how to take, so I broke its fingers with my silence.

As for the bracelet Mom wore to the funeral, what I did was I converted Dad’s last voice message into Morse code, and I used sky-blue beads for silence, maroon beads for breaks between letters, violet beads for breaks between words, and long and short pieces of string between the beads for long and short beeps, which are actually called blips, I think, or something. Dad would have known.

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.

You can make great meals without meat that are, of course, much more healthy for the same price, but it takes a process of reeducation, just because Americans aren't familiar with how to cook vegetables anymore.