Lauren Hakimi

“How does it say in the Talmud: Who giveth life giveth also the fruit of the vine. Rashi interprets it as: God may be God, but brandy is brandy. L’chayim!”
― Sholom Aleichem

“You can see wealth in people no matter what they're wearing. It's in the cut of their chins, a certain gloss to the skin, a drag and pause to their responsiveness. When poor people hear a loud noise, they whip their heads around. Wealthy people finish their sentences, then just glance back.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen

“The dell was to be left in solitude among its dark, old trees, which, with their multitudinous tongues, would whisper long of what had passed there, and no mortal be the wiser. And the melancholy brook would add this other tale to the mystery with which its little heart was already overburdened, and whereof it still kept up a murmuring babble, with not a whit more cheerfulness of tone than for ages heretofore.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“Zealots in the Land of Israel shriek that we ought to do unto Germany as it has done to us-- that, just as Germany has issued a ban on Jewish books, so should we ban all German books, without recognizing or realizing that whoever deprives himself of intellectual discourse jeopardizes his own soul.”
― S.Y. Agnon, Shira