I was proud my father spoke Arabic fluently - his father sent him to learn Arabic from a sheikh - and we had Arab friends. His task of understanding the Arabs - not only politics but poetry - was very important; he took it as a vocation.

I deeply respect literature and expect to gain insight from a book and to identify emotionally with its characters. I therefore avoid reading suspense novels or science fiction.

I think about the Arabs not as enemies but as cousins. Even when we are in a fierce conflict with them, they are more of a kind of family - with all the problems of a family. We have to live with them.

One of the dreams of Zionism was to be a bridge. Instead, we are creating exclusion between the East and the West instead of creating bridges; we are contributing to the conflict between East and West by our stupid desire to have more.

When you write your first book, you're writing in a vacuum; it doesn't matter how much time it takes. And then with the second book, you're on contract, and you have deadlines, and it's a little bit tougher. And also the expectations. You don't want to let your characters down.

Meaning that if you live in the moment, so to speak, we play today, and tonight we're done.

This is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure.

If you build a Model T and you can see the Camry, you don't spend time tinkering with the T; you go straight to the next thing. Once you build the Camry, you can see the Ferrari, so you go straight to that.