I follow the way people change. I follow the way people, who are very antagonized to one another become very close to one another and vice-versa. Sometimes I follow the way people who are intimately close to each other move apart. This is my business as a novelist. It is not about positions and ideas.

There are certain concepts, which exist in English, and are unthinkable, untranslatable into Hebrew and vice versa. Hebrew has a system of tenses, which is, in a big way, different from the English system of tenses, probably different than any European system of tenses, which means a different sense of reality, which means a different concept of time. So, things can be translated, but they become different.

We all begin much much much earlier. In fact, every one of us - every nation, every individual begins hundreds, perhaps thousands of years prior to the date that appears in the passport.

The Palestinians are not going anywhere - -they have nowhere to go. The Israeli Jews also aren't going anywhere - they have nowhere to go. But we cannot become one happy family, because we are not. So, we have to divide the house into two smaller apartments and learn how to say, "good morning" in the hall every day. Eventually, perhaps we will pop in on each other for a cup of coffee. But we need this semi-detached house, a two-family unit.

The English language took in many many fertilizations, many many genes, from other languages, from foreign languages - Latin, French, Nordic languages, German, Scandinavian languages.

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

Almost without exception, my novels are rooted in Israel because that's the place I know well.