But for 30 years, Orthodox leaders have tipped the balance between hawks and doves, and have been in a position to determine who forms a coalition and who runs the country.

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

The revival of Hebrew, as a spoken language, is a fascinating story, which I'm afraid I cannot squeeze into a few sentences. But, let me give you a clue. Think about Elizabethan English, where the entire English language behaved pretty much like molten lava, like a volcano in mid-eruption. Modern Hebrew has some things in common with Elizabethan English. It is being reshaped and it's expanding very rapidly in various directions. This is not to say that every one of us Israeli writers is a William Shakespeare, but there is a certain similarity to Elizabethan English.

Dreams fulfilled are imperfect.

It's possible a Palestinian state will be installed over the heads of the Palestinians. It could be part of an agreement between the Israeli government and moderate Arab states, but not one between Israel and the Palestinians.

I would love to leave my children and grandchildren a nicer world than the one I am going to leave them. But bearing in mind that I was born in the world of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, the legacy I leave them might not be as terrible as the legacy my parents and grandparents left to me.

"The State of the Jews" was not a title of a country. It was a title of a futuristic novel.