Food for her is not food, it is terror, dignity, gratitude, vengeance, joyfulness, humiliation, religion, history, and, of course, love. As if the fruit she always offered us were picked from the destroyed brances of out family tree.
Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do? I don’t mean the world ending with respect to me, but every set of eyes closing with mine.
I missed you even when I was with you. That’s been my problem. I miss what I already have, and I surround myself with things that are missing.
I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time.
In the morning, when the nothing vase casts a something shadow, like the memory of someone you’ve lost, what can you say about that?
We live in a world made up more of story than stuff. We are creatures of memory more than reminders, of love more than likes.
Being with him made my brain quiet. I didn’t have to invent a thing.
I don’t think that there are any limits to how excellent we could make life seem.
I never confused what I had with what I was.
Not responding is a response – we are equally responsible for what we don’t do. In the case of animal slaughter, to throw your hands in the air is to wrap your fingers around a knife handle.
He promised us that everything would be okay. I was a child, but I knew that everything would not be okay. That did not make my father a liar. It made him my father.
I looked at everyone and wondered where they came from, and who they missed, and what they were sorry for.
She laughed enough to migrate an entire flock of birds. That was how she said yes.
I’m deeply curious about Jewish things. I’ve toyed around with the idea of going to rabbinical school.
The bruises go away, and so does how you hate, and so does the feeling that everything you receive from life is something you have earned.
The books could be completely worthless, and things we don’t even read now could be considered the most important books.
Do you eat chicken because you are familiar with the scientific literature on them and have decided that their suffering doesn’t matter, or do you do it because it tastes good?
Love me, because love doesn’t exist, and I have tried everything that does.
It’s the tragedy of loving, you can’t love anything more than something you miss.
Thanksgiving is the holiday that encompasses all others. All of them, from Martin Luther King Day to Arbor Day to Christmas to Valentine’s Day, are in one way or another about being thankful.