I think there is a lot of continuity between the Jewish and the Islamic traditions. We know this historically, though people don't want to talk about that - especially Muslims. There is a common source for both Judaism and Islam, or let's say that Islam finds its source in Judaism. The commonalities of practice and sensibility, ethos and mythos, create a lot of overlap.

I think there is a lot of continuity between the Jewish and the Islamic traditions. We know this historically, though people don't want to talk about that - especially Muslims. There is a common source for both Judaism and Islam, or let's say that Islam finds its source in Judaism. The commonalities of practice and sensibility, ethos and mythos, create a lot of overlap.

If you want to really deeply touch the viewer or the reader, the theater might be the most powerful way to do it.

I think of myself as a narrative artist. I don't think of myself as a novelist or screenwriter or playwright. All of those modalities of processing and experiencing narrative are obviously very different, and I'm not sure that I prefer any one to the other. I think the novel gives you the opportunity to have a kind of interiority that you can't have in the theater, which is pure exteriority.

I don't feel that as an artist my job is to offer PR propaganda, whether for the good or for the bad.

I'm a storyteller. I feel like the issue of discourse is an important one because there's a lot of political and ideological discourse that goes around, and we relate to that on an intellectual level.

I think that literary forms are losing their capacity to connect people to issues, to the experiences that feel most meaningful to them.