If we're a family and your brother wishes you death, it's not a very happy family.

Often, the stories are very much like trust falls. You fall, and you hope the story's going to catch you.

To what extent does anybody control his destiny? Life is very much like falling of the edge of a cliff. You have complete freedom to make all the choices you want to take on your way down. My characters choose to yearn and not lose hope even when the odds are completely against them. It doesn't make the landing at the end of that fall any less painful but, somehow, it helps them keep a little dignity their bone broken body.

The one who swallows cactuses with spines should not complain about hemorrhoids.

If you want to learn how to be happy, you have to know what is sadness first.

I write in a slangy colloquial speech that has not been common in the Israeli tradition of writing, and that is one of the things that gets lost a little in translation.

What connects me so strongly to Israel is the fact that I'm second generation. My parents said, "We have a place where we can just be ourselves and nobody says, 'Don't tell me your opinion, you damn Jew, go somewhere else.'" Then you go to this country and other Jews tell you to shut up. It's frustrating. I think that we have a bad government and that some people are fearful. They're going with the class bully. But I really truly believe - you read it in my stories - that deep inside, people have goodness.