The actual gap between Labor, Likud and the new central party is microscopic.

In many ways, I regard Sharon and Arafat as birds of a feather.

Not now, for the last three thousand years, Hebrew has been penetrated and fertilized by ancient Semitic languages - by Aramaic, by Greek, by Latin, by Arabic, by Yiddish, by Latino, by German, by Russian, by English, I could go on and on. It's very much like English.

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.

Universally, not only in Israel, people want to feel good about themselves. We all want to feel good to some extent.

You know, gynecology has a role; sex is a gift. And literature is not about sending messages.

I'm not sure I'm happy with words such as "task" or "role" when they are attached to literature.