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.

I'm not saying that I don't experience people in life as evil, but writing is not a place of alienation; writing is the place where we can try to be human.

Most of them were murderers. But when I went there to talk, they were the nicest people. I did a reading. I said, "Thank you," and then they said to me, "Could you talk some more?" And I said, "Why?" and they answered, "Most of us are in solitary confinement, so the moment you finish talking, they take us back to our cells. We like hanging out here together."

If you scare somebody enough, they stop being rational.

Sometimes the stories are smarter than me, and suddenly these things start to make sense.

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.

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.