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.

Translators are like ninjas. If you notice them, they’re no good.

When I started writing my stories, I thought that not only nobody outside my language, but nobody outside my neighbourhood would get them.

All my writing-life people kept telling me that I should stop writing short stories and start writing novels: my agent, my Israeli publisher, my foreign ones, my bank manager - they all felt and keep feeling that I'm doing something wrong here.

When my books were translated, it was always about the characters, because the unique language aspect was lost in translation.

For me taking a pragmatic decision when it comes to art is almost an oxymoron. The reason I first picked up a pen and wrote a story had nothing pragmatic in it.

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