We don't have a lot of power in the world, right? We can only control so many things. It allows you to curate your own emotional and artistic intake of life.

Even if you're an observer of a story that you yourself made up, you're still very much connected to it. You love it and feel it, no less than somebody's who's writing from their direct 'I' or 'me.' I'm just so much more interesting in stories than confessions.

No one laughs at God in a hospital.

I hate picking favourite books. I usually tend to stay away from all the 'top record' and 'favourite song' and 'favourite book', and I just think it doesn't do any good for anybody.

I was a kid, and I was very excited to experience this whole new world. And everything was fun, everything from, oh, wow, we get bananas - I'd only seen them in picture books, you know - to, like, the diversity of the neighborhood and to explore Judaism for the first time. It was really hushed in the Soviet Union.

Tomorrow you might get a phone call about something wonderful and you might get a phone call about something terrible.

I just love fiction. I love it.