The most difficult and complicated part of the writing process is the beginning.

Traveling is one expression of the desire to cross boundaries.

And this is one of the major questions of our lives: how we keep boundaries, what permission we have to cross boundaries, and how we do so.

We must see what in the Israeli identity - in the Israeli - we can give to other people rather than speaking so often of taking, expanding territory.

I don't think that when Zionism began there was a claim that we were losing - even in part - our capacity to contribute to other peoples.

Intimate relationships are a gold mine for literature to explore, to understand, to describe.

Since ideology is part of the human personality, it deserves a place in the kingdom of eternal truths.

The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.

At heart, we're all violent raging wolves, but in our actions we can be pacifists.

Art is an invention of aesthetics, which in turn is an invention of philosophers... What we call art is a game.

Your character holds the key to your trustworthiness.

The novel since its origins has been the privatization of history... the history of private life ... and in that sense every novel is an historical novel.

I brought in producer Johan Carlsson [Ariana Grande, One Direction, Flo Rida] and asked, "Can you make this better?" And he did.

I like the plot of The Nutcracker - not at all.

One night last summer, all the killers in my head assembled on a stage in Massachusetts to sing show tunes.

With a poem you can say 'I got my feeling into words for myself. I now have the equivalent in words for that much of what I have felt.'

The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.