Here I am, a Palestinian Arab who only knows how to write in Hebrew, stuck in central Illinois.

I always see my wife as the clever one, as the wise one in the family.

I very much hope that when my wife reads my writings so she reads it as if she is a character and not the real one. Sometimes she takes it too personally.

I'm not sure that I recovered, but I also know that I cannot afford going back yet. I see how much the kids are happier, I guess, here and I think that they might have a better future not hiding.

Christmas is relentless. It's around the clock. I sit with my little ones in front of the TV screen, and we watch movie after movie after movie.

Sometimes I wonder if there is any hope left for an Israeli-Palestinian discourse that is built on equality and liberty rather than a fruitless discourse of master and servant.

Israeli independence - what we Arabs call al-Naqba, 'The Catastrophe' - it created Palestinian identity more than anything else.

Thanksgiving is the only day of the year when most of the stores here are closed during the day and reopen after midnight. Even restaurants shut down for the holiday, except for the fast-food chains.

I'm always sad when Dad doesn't like my columns. He waits for them every week and usually likes them, in which case he doesn't say a word - it's only if he's critical that he bothers to call.

Somehow, since I became a family, every minute in which I am alone and not listening to two kids screaming in stereo feels like a vacation.

Your joy can be the impetus that motivates others to find their way to joy.

He who refuses to stoop, who cannot be bribed by the promise of success or the fear of failure - who walks the highway of the right, and in disaster stands erect, is the only victor.

Beauty is not just a white girl. It's so many different flavors and shades.

For Vladimir Putin to be trying to impact our elections, that - we have to - there has to be - he has to be held accountable.

It is normal for me to wake and find myself writing in the dark... or to be out of my tomb, caught in an unearthly world, alive with the images that haunt me.

Hopefully, I'll just get to be part of good films and work with good people, and that's how it will develop.

There are all kinds of symbols. Verbal language is only one. Sometimes by opening our mouths, we make dreadful errors. It's often so much nicer just to look at somebody and vibrate.

I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it

The wolf is living for the earth.

You are certainly one of the joys of life for all who have ever come within a mile of you.