"When at last the assent of the angels to the creation of man was given, God said to Gabriel: “Go and fetch Me dust from the four corners of the earth, and I will create man therewith.” Gabriel went forth to do the bidding of the Lord, but the earth drove him away, and refused to let him gather up dust from it. Gabriel remonstrated: “Why, O Earth, dost thou not hearken unto the voice of the Lord, who founded thee upon the waters without props or pillars?” The earth replied, and said: “I am destined to become a curse, and to be cursed through man, and if God Himself does not take the dust from me, no one else shall ever do it.”"

"Woman covers her hair in token of Eve's having brought sin into the world; she tries to hide her shame; and women precede men in a funeral cortege, because it was woman who brought death into the world. ... Adam was the heave offering of the world, and Eve defiled it. As expiation, all women are commanded to separate a heave offering from the dough. And because woman extinguished the light of man's soul, she is bidden to kindle the Sabbath light."

"Abel selected the best of his flocks for his sacrifice, but Cain ate his meal first, and after he had satisfied his appetite, he offered unto God what was left over, a few grains of flax seed. As though his offense had not been great enough in offering unto God fruit of the ground which had been cursed by God! What wonder that his sacrifice was not received with favor! Besides, a chastisement was inflicted upon him. His face turned black as smoke. Nevertheless, his disposition underwent no change, even when God spoke to him thus: “If thou wilt amend thy ways, thy guilt will be forgiven thee; if not, thou wilt be delivered into the power of the evil inclination. It coucheth at the door of thy heart, yet it depends upon thee whether thou shalt be master over it, or it shall be master over thee.”"

"The purpose of the sleep that enfolded Adam was to give him a wife, so that the human race might develop, and all creatures recognize the difference between God and man. When the earth heard what God had resolved to do, it began to tremble and quake. “I have not the strength,” it said, “to provide food for the herd of Adam’s descendants.” But God pacified it with the words, “I and thou together, we will find food for the herd.”"

"Nor is this world inhabited by man the first of things earthly created by God. He made several worlds before ours, but He destroyed them all, because He was pleased with none until He created ours. But even this last world would have had no permanence, if God had executed His original plan of ruling it according to the principle of strict justice. It was only when He saw that justice by itself would undermine the world that He associated mercy with justice, and made them to rule jointly. Thus, from the beginning of all things prevailed Divine goodness, without which nothing could have continued to exist. If not for it, the myriads of evil spirits had soon put an end to the generations of men."

"Why don’t we accept racial stereotypes as reasonable hypotheses, okay to consider until they have been scientifically proven false? They are offensive precisely because they violate our intuition about the balance between innateness and self-determination of the moral and cultural qualities of human beings. No reasonable person would be offended by the observation that Africans have curlier hair than the Chinese, notwithstanding the possibility of some future environment in which it is no longer true. But we can recognize a contention that Chinese people are genetically predisposed to be better table-tennis players than Africans as silly, and the contention that they are smarter than Africans as ugly, because it is a matter of ethical principle that individual and cultural accomplishment is not tied to the genes in the same way as the appearance of our hair."

"When the theoretical questions are properly understood, proponents of race science, while entitled to their freedom of inquiry and expression, deserve the vigorous disapprobation they often receive."

"It's actually quite frightening to be an author and know the business side of publishing. I imagine it's easier to be in Iowa and not know what's going on with your book. If the industry had stayed the same, I might still feel in control of the publishing process, but sales reps' jobs have changed, marketing jobs have changed, publicity jobs have changed."

"... when I just started this book I thought: Roth’s pretty much has it down on what the worse thing a Jewish boy can do but what is the worst thing a Jewish girl can do? Well: it is most likely throwing up her mother’s cooking. Food is identity, it’s love, it’s politics, it’s family. To reject that, and in such a self-destructive manner, is something I wanted to investigate. It also implicitly brings up the notion of privilege, which is also a stereotype many young Jewish women are saddled with."

"If it is ever documented conclusively, the genetic inferiority of a race on a trait as important as intelligence will rank with the atomic bomb as the most destructive scientific discovery in human history. The correct conclusion is to withhold judgment."

"My husband and I were on this protracted and tragic adoption journey. It was really hard and there were a lot of things that went wrong, so I decided while this is happening I'd write a book about it to make it more interesting as opposed to just tragic. It's definitely based on our experience, but not exactly our experience. You know, I feel like if writers used writing as therapy we'd have a ton of happy writers [laughs]. I think I learned some things about it, how to be patient, a little bit, and I'm so hard on that narrator, that I got to see the worst of how I felt. My husband said this to me actually—he said I was taking this horrible thing that we were going through and turning it into something positive. I felt productive in that way."

"The heart’s dead Are never buried."

"Smelling like a municipal budget."

"Little by little we subtract Faith and Fallacy from Fact, The Illusory from the True, And starve upon the Residue."

"Which six of the seven cities that claimed Homer were liars?"

"To You, oh, Goddess of Efficiency, Your happy vassals bend the reverent knee, Save when arthritis, your benighted foe, Sulks in the bones and sourly mumbles "No!""

"The countless cousins of the Czar, Grand Duke or Duchess, every one, As multitudinous as are The spheres (who borrow from the sun)."

"To all the starry host of Heaven they cried, But had no radio and of course they died."

"Breathes there a man with hide so tough Who says two sexes aren’t enough?"

"If you love me, as I love you, We'll both be friendly and untrue."

"Blessings love disguise."

"Your little voice, So soft and kind; Your little soul, Your little mind!"

"My soul is dark with stormy riot, Directly traceable to diet."

"The head that wears a crown may be Inclined to some anxiety, But, on the other hand, I know A derby domes its meed of woe."

"Babies haven’t any hair; Old men’s heads are just as bare;— Between the cradle and the grave Lies a haircut and a shave."

"I burned my candle at both ends, And now have neither foes nor friends."

"I play with the bulls and the bears; I’m the Bartlett of market quotations."

"I’d rather listen to a flute In Gotham, than a band in Butte."

"The stars, like measles, fade at last."

"You buy some flowers for your table; You tend them tenderly as you’re able; You fetch them water from hither and thither— What thanks do you get for it all? They wither."

"The dead they sleep a long, long sleep; The dead they rest, and their rest is deep; The dead have peace, but the living weep."

"When trouble drives me into rhyme, Which is two-thirds of all the time, What peace a thought like this can give— Great is the age in which we live!"

"When the wind is in the tree, It makes a noise just like the sea, As if there were not noise enough To bother one, without that stuff."

"Of all the birds that sing and fly Between the housetops and the sky, The muddy sparrow, mean and small, I like, by far, the best of all."

"The apple grows so bright and high, And ends its days in apple pie."

"Some folks I know are always worried, That when they die, they will be buried; And some I know are quite elated Because they’re going to be cremated."

"Loyal be to loyal friends; Make them pay you dividends; Work, like the industrious bee, Your friends and foes impartially."

"Four of us together dwell— Two from Heaven and two from Hell; Four of us under the selfsame sky— Love and Death and a Dream and I."

"Oh, how various is the scene Allowed to Man for his demesne!"

"When you’re away, I’m restless, lonely, Wretched, bored, dejected; only Here’s the rub, my darling dear, I feel the same when you are here."

"The scientific method consists of the use of procedures designed to show not that our predictions and hypotheses are right, but that they might be wrong. Scientific reasoning is useful to anyone in any job because it makes us face the possibility, even the dire reality, that we were mistaken. It forces us to confront our self-justifications and put them on public display for others to puncture. At its core, therefore, science is a form of arrogance control."

"No light, no light in the blue Polish eye."

"Much casual death had drained away their souls."

"The Lüger hovered lightly in its glove."

"No prayers or incense rose up in those hours Which grew to be years, and every day came mute Ghosts from the ovens, sifting through crisp air, And settled upon his eyes in a black soot."

"And sometimes I bring her a bottle of Nuit d' Amour."

"So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them, And he said to her, "Try to be true to me, And I'll do the same for you, for things are bad All over, etc., etc." ... But all the time he was talking she had in mind The notion of what his whiskers would feel like On the back of her neck."

"She got to looking out At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad, Thinking of all the wine and enormous beds And blandishments in French and the perfumes."

"Running to fat, but dependable as they come."

"To have been brought All the way down from London, and then be addressed As a sort of mournful cosmic last resort Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty."