The Language of Love

There is one benefit in feeling stupid, at least when you’re old: compassion.

We never met. I have only seen your picture. And even that came long after I knew that we were bonded by an ancient bond, that there was a debt that I owed you

She wrote: My brother is dying! Tell me something, please... But I could not answer then. And later, when I could, this is what I wrote to her...

It’s stronger than you, buddy. You have to know that. It’s stronger and when it can’t burst out of your chest or squeeze through the spaces of your rib cage or rip your heart into little pieces, it finds another route...

It had always seemed to me that, for most of us, many of the Torah’s laws restricting relations between the sexes are a sort of collective punishment for the sins of a few. But recently my perspective has changed . . .

The older I get the more apparent my lies have become. I barely believe myself anymore, especially when I make grand statements like, "I’ll never do or say that again." Too often the future robs me of my honesty

We don’t do anything. There's something in the atmosphere and experience that takes away the ability to concentrate or focus. One’s greatest desire is simply to not be there, to not be doing this, and to have it be over with as quickly as possible . . .

She walked out of the room. Halfway down the hallway she stopped and stood motionless as if confronting an invisible wall

Could others see the countless tiny strands of their separate anxieties silently knitting them together? Did anyone notice how, though they sat on separate chairs not touching, they sat as close as two people could without touching?