Imagination needs food like every dog and every cat and every bird and every fish.

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

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a tragedy; it is a clash between right and right. And, therefore it's not black and white. Sometimes, recently it is indeed a clash between wrong and wrong. It is not as simple as fascism was.

We have to carry through to the next day and hope that we will be okay tomorrow as we are today and in the meantime, enjoy life.

If you change your diet, someone will call you a traitor.

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