“The whole house seemed to exhale a melancholy breath of emptiness”

“Although sex was something they both regarded as perilous, marriage had, by contrast, seemed safe a safe house in a world of danger; the ultimate haven of two solitary, fearful souls. When you were...”

“But there is no Messiah of Sitka. Landsman has no home, no future, no fate but Bina. The land that he and she were promised was bounded only by the fringes of their wedding canopy, by the dog-eared...”

“Landsman and Bina were married to each other for twelve years and together for five before that. Each was the other's first lover, first betrayer, first refuge, first roommate, first audience, firs...”

“Mendel had a remarkable nature as a boy. Im not talking about miracles. Miracles are a burden for a tzaddik, not the proof of one. Miracles prove nothing except to those whose faith is bought very ...”

“Literature, like magic, has always been about the handling of secrets, about the pain, the destruction, and the marvelous liberation that can result when they are revealed. Telling the truth when t...”

“You must create the right kind of dream, the sober, adult kind of magic: illusion born from disillusion.”

“There is endless happiness in this world, but provided one knows the science behind it! Science can give happiness. You have become disillusioned; the wrong belief has set in and that is why you ar...”

“Disillusion in an ache that eats into the dreams of goodness, of love, of any value that matters - even to the very belief in life.”

“He was talking about the sign that said 'THE COMPLICATED FUTILITY OF IGNORANCE.''All knew was that I didn't want my daughter or anybody's child to see a message that negative every time she comes i...”

“Listen up - there's no war that will end all wars.”

“How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought, when such things are possible. It must be all lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent t...”