My father - I once asked him what was his greatest achievement. He said his greatest achievement was that he fought in five wars in the infantry, always on the front line, and never hurt anybody.

I always have a story in my head that needs to be written, or at least I think I do. But I usually can't find the time to write it.

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 works are being translated, I always get this question from my translators: Up or down? Which means, should it sound biblical and highbrow, or should we take it all down to sound colloquial? In Hebrew, it's both all the time. People in Israel would write in a high register, they wouldn't write colloquial speech. I do a special take on colloquial speech.

It's kind of a reflex for me to ignore my own wishes and think about other people first.

Hebrew was frozen, like frozen peas, fresh out of the Bible.

During the war, there were people wishing me death, wishing my son death, wishing my wife death in very graphic ways. In the past, I would go overseas and I would say, "Israel is like my family: we disagree, but we're all brothers." I can't say that anymore, because life proves me wrong.