That's my gutsy advice to any young writer: write only about what you know well.

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.

We can succeed only by concert. It is not 'can any of us imagine better?, but 'can we all do better?

I know when something is kind of half-baked.

I wish I could just accept that I'm not that good and not be shy about the fact that I'm not that professional.

Why abandon a seat in your own home to wander in vain through dusty regions of another land? If you make one false step, you miss what is right before your eyes.

A land full of places that are not worth caring about may soon be a nation and a way of life that is not worth defending.

Adults are just children sometimes. But evil, hurt children.

I think parenting actually makes you lose pieces of your soul again, because they go off, into your children. Or, I mean, I am so fragmented, and I'm such a spacey person.

The guitar's not all that expensive either, when you compare it to gettin' a toothpulled or something.

Love has no limits. Compassion has no party. It is the responsibility of every human being and every institution to end poverty and to interrupt injustice.

When I write songs for myself it's really personal and I just can't have someone else singing it.