I write what needs to be written the way that seems genuinely right. If what comes out of it are stories, then it is my vocation to believe in them and in the fact that they'll interest people and maybe affect their lives.

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.

If you scare somebody enough, they stop being rational.

He misses the feeling of creating something out of something. That’s right — something out of something. Because something out of nothing is when you make something up out of thin air, in which case it has no value. Anybody can do that. But something out of something means it was really there the whole time, inside you, and you discover it as part of something new, that’s never happened before.

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.

Collaborating with your wife is amazing because you are doing something together with a person you truly love and know and discover things about her in that process which you have never had discovered on other circumstances.

I have to admit that talking authoritatively about my students' stories can make me feel, at times, like an astronaut who has just landed on a new planet and insists on giving guided tours to its inhabitants.