In My Vocabulary, The Word

When I Need To Take A Side, I Write A Newspaper Article And I Tell My Government, "you Should Not Do That, You Should Do This." They Don't Listen To Me, But I've Been Doing This For Sixty Years Now. But, When I Write A Novel, I Am Not In That Business. I Follow The Way People Change. I Follow The Way People, Who Are Very Antagonized To One Another Become Very Close To One Another And Vice-versa. Sometimes I Follow The Way People Who Are Intimately Close To Each Other Move Apart.

Hebrew Has A System Of Tenses, Which Is, In A Big Way, Different From The English System Of Tenses, Probably Different Than Any European System Of Tenses, Which Means A Different Sense Of Reality, Which Means A Different Concept Of Time.

The Far Right Is Saying To Us: Forget About The Two-state Solution, It Is Going To Be A Jewish State From The Coast To Jordan. The Left Wing Says You Have To Forget About Jewish Self-determination, You Will Have To Live As A Minority In An Arab State - Just Like The Whites In South Africa. The Key Word That Both Have In Mind Is That The Situation In The West Bank Is "irrevocable." It Is One Of The Words I Dislike The Most.

I Know That A Translation Of A Work Of Literature Is Like Playing A Violin Concerto On The Piano. You Can Do This. You Can Do This Very Successfully On One Strict Condition: Never Try To Force The Piano To Produce The Sounds Of The Violin. This Will Be Grotesque.

All My Novels Are Rooted In Their Time And In Their Place. The Place Of My Novels Is Israel, Almost Without Exception. Almost Without Exception, My Novels Are Rooted In Israel Because That's The Place I Know Well. And, That's My Gutsy Advice To Any Young Writer: Write Only About What You Know Well. Don't Write About That Which You Don't Know.