The gift of literature is that, in some lucky cases, reading a novel or a story makes the reader more curious, more open-minded.

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.

Our morality system has become a mechanical device for protecting us against ourselves

I am on pilgrim to self-realisation.

The realization that you can't predict the future -- and mold it -- could only come as a shock to an academic.

I wasn't just the madwoman in the attic--I was the attic itself. The past was all over me, all under me, all inside me.

There's lots of ways people can be dependent, on another person, or drugs.

On waking from the dream, we see that birth and death, the sense of self, other - all of these things fade away.

I do need to loosen up a bit, and that usually does come with old age. That's the intention.

Think so big, so audacious that people will think you are crazy.

There is no worse torture than knowing intellectually about love and the way.

I don't own a computer. I have a nine-foot piano in my home to compose my messages. Why would I want a one-foot computer to do the same thing?