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

I know that a translation of a work of literature is like playing a violin concerto on the piano. You can do this. You can do this very successfully on one strict condition: never try to force the piano to produce the sounds of the violin. This will be grotesque.

Literature exists inside the language. It's made of words. It's not made of ideas and it's not made of concepts, of psychological analysis. It's made of words. In the same way in which music is made of notes and a painting is made of lines of colors, the matter of literature are words.

I wrote The Same Sea not as a political allegory about Israelis and Palestinians. I wrote it about something much more gutsy and immediate. I wrote it as a piece of chamber music.

Literature may open a third eye in the middle of the reader's forehead.

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.

Writing a poem is like having an affair, a one-night stand; a short story is a romance, a relationship; a novel is a marriage-one has to be cunning, devise compromises, and make sacrifices.