My Musical Instrument Is Hebrew

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.

It Is Wrong To Take An 18-year-old Boy Or Girl And Arm Them With Machine Guns And Make Them The Almighty King Of Some Little Arab Village. No Young Man, And No Old Man Either, Should Have So Much Power Over The Life And Death Of So Many Helpless Individuals. It Is Corrupting. It Sometimes Provokes Desperate, Savage And Indiscriminate Violence Among The Occupied.

A Little More Than A Hundred Years Ago, "tel Aviv" Was Not A City. It Was A Title Of A Novel Written By An Author. The "return To Zion" Was A Name Of Another Novel. There Was A Bookshelf. There Was No Country. There Was No State. There Was No Nation. There Was No Physical Jewish Reality In This Country.

Actually, Who Hasn't Been Through The Ghastly Experience Of Sitting In Front Of A Blank Page, With Its Toothless Mouth Grinning At You: Go Ahead, Let's See You Lay A Finger On Me? A Blank Page Is Actually A Whitewashed Wall With No Door And No Window. Beginning To Tell A Story Is Like Making A Pass At A Total Stranger In A Restaurant.

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.