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.

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.

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.

I know my career is going badly because I'm being quoted correctly.

Consciousness is part of our nature as sentient beings, but doesn’t mean we are aware at a particular moment. By perceiving our consciousness - becoming conscious of consciousness, we become aware.

The moment a book is lent I begin to miss it.

What you think is impossible in life actually is possible.

In the 90s, there was a yahoo factor where there would be 50 people crowd surfing at one time! It was insane, and it had nothing to do with the music.

You can have the best vaccines for a woman or her child, but if you can't get her to come and get them then they won't work.

Gain a modest reputation for being unreliable and you will never be asked to do a thing.

If you put anger in the writing, then it's like an actor crying on stage. The audience will not cry with the actor and in some way inure itself against the emotion.

I am desperate for attention. But everyone else is too. Everyone has fantasies of fame and greatness. Life for most people is a process of shedding those fantasies.

I'm fascinated by Bollywood.