David Grossman may be the most gifted writer I've ever read. [To the End of the Land is] powerful, shattering, and unflinching. To read it is to have yourself taken apart, undone, touched at the place of your own essence.

To hike out alone in the desert; to sleep on the valley floor on a night with no moon, in the pitch black, just listening to the boom of silence: you can't imagine what that's like.

Only now that my son was gone did I realize how much I'd been living for him. When I woke up in the morning it was because he existed, and when I ordered food it was because he existed, and when I wrote my book it was because he existed to read it.

What interests me very much as a writer is the ability for writing to have our lives to be occupied so vividly by others. I think that's what we long for as writers.

To me, this is the singular privilege of reading literature: we are allowed to step into another's life.

Getting a book published made me feel a little bit sad... I felt driven by the need to write a book, rather than the need to write. I needed to figure out what was important to me as a writer.

That he liked to think of himself as a philosopher. That he questioned all things, even the most simple, to the extent that when someone passing him on the street raised his hat and said, 'Good day,' Litvinoff often paused so long to weigh evidence that by the time he'd settled on an answer the person had gone on his way, leaving him standing alone.