No human being really begins on the day which appears in the passport as their date of birth. We all begin much much much earlier.

Every single pleasure I can imagine or have experienced is more delightful, more of a pleasure, if you take it in small sips, if you take your time. Reading is not an exception.

Fundamentalist s live life with an exclamation point. I prefer to live my life with a question mark.

Writing a poem is like having an affair, a one-night stand; a short story is a romance, a relationship; a novel is a marriage-one has to be cunning, devise compromises, and make sacrifices.

Words create conceptions and self-conceptions and ultimately nations. They can start and stop wars. They can would and heal. Choosing words carefully is a moral responsibility.

A conflict begins and ends in the hearts and minds of people, not in the hilltops.

All of my novels are democracies.

The only way to keep a dream, any dream at all, to keep a dream perfect and rosy and intact and unsullied is never to live it out.

The opposite of compromise is not integrity. The opposite of compromise is not idealism. The opposite of compromise is fanaticism and death.

I wrote The Same Sea not as a political allegory about Israelis and Palestinians. I wrote it about something much more gutsy and immediate. I wrote it as a piece of chamber music.

Now, Israel is a fulfillment, and as a fulfillment, it is flawed. The fact that it is flawed is not so much a testimony about the failures of Israel. No, it is a testimony about the nature of dreams.

Is cruelty a moral judgment if it is fundamental to forms of life? Who is man to say that the workings of nature, and therefore of the divine plan of which he himself is part, are cruel?

Kids get caught up in technical & electronic things like games & videos when all we had were magazines.

Language changes and moves in a different direction evolving all the time. Where a lot of people see deterioration, I see expressive development

On a deeper level you are already complete. When you realize that, there is a joyous energy behind what you do.

Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.

You must practice to be able to return to essential principles at any moment.

I always believe in doing new things and using new materials that I have never used or that I didn't like for a long time.

I make a dog-friendly version of almost everything that we make for dinner.

You cannot be a true man until you learn to obey.

There was a knight came riding by In early spring, when the roads were dry; And he heard that lady sing at the noon, Two red roses across the moon.