I don't think Israelis are less critical of corruption than people in Italy, France or America. Israel is special in a different way. There is a daytime Israel and a nighttime Israel. The first is self-confident, pushy and passionate, like other Mediterranean lands. It is hedonistic, materialistic and almost arrogant. During the nighttime, people are terrified, people are filled with existential dreads. These fears aren't baseless.

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.

If you steal from one book you are condemned as a plagiarist, but if you steal from ten books you are considered a scholar, and if you steal from thirty or forty books, a distinguished scholar.

Black Box is not a statement about injustice committed against Sephardi Oriental Jews or about the extremism of religious Jews or the lack of imagination of the old Israeli elites. It's a human story, in my view, first and foremost about a mystical communion between enemies. This is the inner story of the novel. This is my business as a novelist. It is not about positions and ideas.

I write about reconciliation, but not as a miracle, as a slow, gradual process of mutual discovery - discovering one another.

Do not cut lose from your longings - for what are we without our longings?

Never cut loose from your longings.