I never know the endings when I write. It's a turnoff when you know the ending. You lose much of your incentive to write when you already know. It's like seeing a movie a second time.

This idea where, in this safe haven for Jews, Jews will threaten to kill other Jews, it wasn't in the brochure.

In the army you feel violated - there's no private space. Writing was a life-saver, a way of recovering private territory.

I think that any authentic feeling one has of life should be a feeling of defeat. It's a losing game. You're going to die. Civilization is going to end. Our society is in decline, and we should feel OK about it because Roman society was in decline and before it the Assyrian one was, and they disappeared off this earth and we will disappear too.

I really believe hatred is not a primal emotion, in that you can't find it in nature. It's basically some kind of distortion of fear.

What happens when you speak colloquial Hebrew is you switch between registers all the time. So in a typical sentence, three words are biblical, one word is Russian, and one word is Yiddish. This kind of connection between very high language and very low language is very natural, people use it all the time.

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