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.

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.

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.

One of the things I wanted to introduce in The Same Sea beyond transcending the conflict, is the fact that deep down below all our secrets are the same.

Pray daily for your family.

Be positive at every moment of life. See the good things in every situation and learn from them

This new form of dialogue that is bringing us to the art to which I have dedicated my life, is rooted in the deepest and most beautiful part of being human.

What I have always wanted more than revenge is to bring the other person to recognition of the pain they caused, so they essentially say, "I will never do that again."

Pain is an event ... Suffering, on the other hand, is the nightmare reliving of unscrutinized and unmetabolized pain.

The FDA has received over a million comments from citizens demanding labeling of GMOs. 90 percent of Americans agree. So, why no labeling?

Never criticize the composition of a Royal Highness. You never know who may have written it.

I didn't start to be an artist myself until I was 24.

If you think about yourself then you've lost sight of the ball.

I wonder if you can understand, I never really knew what it was to want, until you.