I was thinking a lot about myself and my own super inextricably Jewish boy link with my mother. I felt like even a Jewish spy would have this relationship, so yes, I was very much exploring this relationship of boys and their mothers, and Jewish boys and their mothers. Exactly that, the ridiculous lengths that a doting mother will go for her son, and the ridiculous lengths that - I will pretend this is distanced from me - the ridiculous neediness of a grown man for a mother.

Harder than waking from a nightmare was trying to wake herself into one.

What interests me when I'm writing is being able to crawl into a character's head and speak from his or her mouth. It's not pulling the strings on a marionette, it's not playing ventriloquist, and it's not mimicry. It's about inhabiting a character, and, at the same time, being totally unaware of what you've become.

I sometimes think about that, when I finish in something big I find it even hard, I feel like I lose an actual noticeable percentage of my reading time. Even on the reader end I find it so hard when a book that I love so much ends, to find the kindness to enter into a new one. Do you know what I'm saying? To find my way in, I feel like even there's that space after. I just love inhabiting a book that hits right.

You know, and I don't say this, I'll say as someone who lived in Israel for a long time, let me call myself someone who spent six or seven years in Jerusalem, we don't need any more Americans flying over to fix things. They need to fix it. I'm someone who fell in love with the city and fell in love with a place, and has high hopes for everyone there, the good people on both sides.

You cannot learn to curse like an American.

I think books can cure cancer and grow back hair. I can't say it enough. For me, that's why it's so syrupy. It's both syrupy and over the top, and overly sincere, and also dead true. What else can I tell you? A writer can't catch a cab half the time, but when there's a demagogue, when there's a government that wants to suppress, there's a reason that writers end up getting in trouble. It's such a subversive form that can really change people.