I think tone gives birth to the story.

People usually don't allow you to cut off their tongue.

If you scare somebody enough, they stop being rational.

Life keeps being a beautiful and frustrating experience.

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

I think there are some artists whose works are misanthropic.

Translators are like ninjas. If you notice them, they’re no good.

For three months, a person sits and looks at you, imagining a kiss.

You'll never know what's happening inside the heads of other people.

I like smoking pot, but I'm not the kind of guy who smokes every day.

You don't need to use the language of God to ask where the restrooms are.

If you want to learn how to be happy, you have to know what is sadness first.

What connects me so strongly to Israel is the fact that I'm second generation.

I don't need art to tell me people are assholes. I can just go into the streets.

The one who swallows cactuses with spines should not complain about hemorrhoids.

Apparently, I'm very, very popular in jails. They often ask me to come and speak.

If we're a family and your brother wishes you death, it's not a very happy family.

It's funny, but I think my stories - the good ones - they're much smarter than I am.

My first and biggest love was always fiction writing. But it is a very lonely pastime.

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

Life is one heck of an invention. It is better than the iPhone 4S and Coke Zero combined.

Sometimes the stories are smarter than me, and suddenly these things start to make sense.

The best stories you usually hear are stories that people feel some type of urgency about.

My stories are very compact. I want them to say the most complex things in the simplest way.

Rabbits are played. Nowadays it's all about the turtles. Tell them it's a ninja, they'll freak.

Often in writing programs, articulation and clarity are more important than what you actually say.

I think that, in Israel, the greatest fear that people have, and I have it, too, is fear of genocide.

Writing is very castrating in the moment. Fiction in general, it has no function, nobody asks for it.

The reason I write is that I'm not in dialogue with my emotions; writing puts me in touch with myself.

Often, the stories are very much like trust falls. You fall, and you hope the story's going to catch you.

I was born at six months, and I weighed 900 grams [less than two pounds]. I have a very heroic birth story.

Hebrew is this unique thing that you cannot translate to any other language. It has to do with its history.

I think that becoming a parent kind of made me try to be more responsible. And it made me much more stressful.

This idea where, in this safe haven for Jews, Jews will threaten to kill other Jews, it wasn't in the brochure.

I think living in Israel and wanting to change reality is the best prescription for never-ending writer's block.

In the last war, people became vocal from the right-wing point of view: if you're liberal, then you're a traitor.

In my stories I can kiss the girls I want to kiss and punch the girls I want to punch. Nobody pays a price for it.

As a monogamous creature, I feel sometimes that it fills up a function that affairs have in married people's life.

I think that, in Hebrew, it's like the language creates a more unique and specific universe even before the story.

I think when you write, you should call it a "writing spree." I don't write every day, and I don't write regularly.

In the army you feel violated - there's no private space. Writing was a life-saver, a way of recovering private territory.

As a child, I never wanted my parents to be unhappy, which meant that I would always contemplate what would make them happy.

When my books were translated, it was always about the characters, because the unique language aspect was lost in translation.

In Israel, the role of the writer is dictated by the language in which you write. Writers see themselves as cultural prophets.

The amazing thing about an artistic collaboration is that it is as intense and intimate as a romantic one. Sometimes even more so.

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.

Before I started to make films, I didn't give much thought to the way the characters were physically positioned in the story world.

I think that before my son was born, I didn't have a strong sensation for future. I was living in this kind of never-ending present.

I usually start writing stories from tone and not from content - kind of like people who create music and invent the lyrics later on.

I really believe hatred is not a primal emotion, in that you can't find it in nature. It's basically some kind of distortion of fear.

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