I wrote a novel about Israelis who live their own lives on the slope of a volcano. Near a volcano one still falls in love, one still gets jealous, one still wants a promotion, one still gossips.

Every single pleasure I can imagine or have experienced is more delightful, more of a pleasure, if you take it in small sips, if you take your time. Reading is not an exception.

Fundamentalist s live life with an exclamation point. I prefer to live my life with a question mark.

Writing a poem is like having an affair, a one-night stand; a short story is a romance, a relationship; a novel is a marriage-one has to be cunning, devise compromises, and make sacrifices.

Words create conceptions and self-conceptions and ultimately nations. They can start and stop wars. They can would and heal. Choosing words carefully is a moral responsibility.

A conflict begins and ends in the hearts and minds of people, not in the hilltops.

All of my novels are democracies.

The only way to keep a dream, any dream at all, to keep a dream perfect and rosy and intact and unsullied is never to live it out.

The opposite of compromise is not integrity. The opposite of compromise is not idealism. The opposite of compromise is fanaticism and death.

I wrote The Same Sea not as a political allegory about Israelis and Palestinians. I wrote it about something much more gutsy and immediate. I wrote it as a piece of chamber music.

Now, Israel is a fulfillment, and as a fulfillment, it is flawed. The fact that it is flawed is not so much a testimony about the failures of Israel. No, it is a testimony about the nature of dreams.

And in the end, we were all just humans.. drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness.

She finally said: 'I want to provide you with the opportunity to be free to make a choice of belonging with someone, but never to someone else'.

It's not that people don't know when they'll die. It's that they don't seem to know they'll die.

Making mountains out of molehills sells more books than a study of molehills.

One path leads back to this world, to rebirth; one path leads beyond. Your soul stands at a crossword, trying to make a decision, flipping a coin, a nice image for the soul, I think.

I bargained with Life for a penny, And Life would pay no more, However I begged at evening When I counted my scanty store.

When it comes to meat, change is almost always cast as an absolute. You are a vegetarian or you are not.

Life is a rollercoaster ride and I don't intend on being the one screaming and hanging on for dear life.

Art has a unique capacity to take one or other facet of the message and translate it into colors, shapes and sounds which nourish the intuition of those who look and listen.

Unless you learn to play a duet in the same key, to the same rhythm, a slow process of disengagement will wedge you apart, first secretly, psychologically, and then openly and miserably.