“You don't read Gatsby, I said, to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how complicated issues such as adultery and fidelity and marriage are. A great novel heightens your senses...”

“Our personal fears and emotions are at times stronger than public danger. By keeping them secret, we allow them to remain malignant. You need to be able to articulate something if you want it to go...”

“I searched modern fiction and poetry for clues to how we confronted and evaded reality, how we articulated our experience and turned to language not to revel ourselves but to hide. I was as sure th...”

“...these sleepless nights, when oddly enough my concentration was high, fueled perhaps by the effort to ignore the all-engrossing threat of bombs and rockets.”

“I was reminded of a painter friend who had started her career by depicting scenes from life, mainly deserted rooms, abandoned houses and discarded photographs of women. Gradually, her work became m...”

“All our lives my brother and I were caught by the fictions my parents told usfictions about themselves as well as others. Each wanted us to judge the other in his or her favor. Sometimes I felt che...”

“It was during those years that I discovered that loving [my father] was like sticking a blade into my own heart. It got me nowhere, except awake in the middle of the night, recalling the years when...”

“She smiled at him, that same look of shared understanding, then reached in again to touch his hand, pinching his palm between her thumb and index finger. 'You OK?''I could be on fire, but seeing yo...”

“We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war.”

“youre already naked in this worldin this timein this lifebeacause your next loveyour next hungeryou next laughterand even your next tearmay never come”

“Negotiations with Iran, especially, will not be easy under any circumstances, but I suspect that they might be somewhat less difficult if the nuclear-weapon states could show that their requests ar...”