To be Jewish is to be specifically identified with a history. And if you're not aware of that when you're a child, the whole tradition is lost.

Food doesn't exist, but can only be invented. And reinvented.

The domestic lives we live - which may be accidental, or not entirely of our making - help to make possible our writing lives; our imaginations are freed, or stimulated, by the very prospect of companionship, quiet, a predictable and consoling routine.

Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.

Loneliness is like starvation: you don't realize how hungry you are until you begin to eat.

My belief is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment and one another. Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish.

I could never take the idea of religion very seriously.