When People Have Peace, They Hate It

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.

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.

My Musical Instrument Is Hebrew And, To Me, This Is The Most Important Fact About My Writing. I Write In Words. I Don Write In Sounds Or In Shapes Or In Flavors. I Write In Words. And My Words Are Hebrew Words.

Let Me Make It Very Clear: When I Say Compromise I Do Not Mean Capitulation. When I Say Compromise I Definitely Do Not Mean What Jesus Christ Meant When He Offered Us To Turn Our Other Cheek To Our Enemies. Compromise Means, Try To Meet The Other Somewhere Half-way. And, This Can Only Happen If The Other Is Willing To Go Half-way In Order To Meet You. That Is The Very Strict Line Between Compromise And Capitulation. I'm A Great Believer In Compromises. I Do Not Believe In Capitulation.

Of Course, We Carry Inside Of Ourselves Our Parents. Even When They Are Dead, We Carry Them Inside Ourselves. And They Are Carrying Inside Themselves Their Dead Parents And So On And So Forth. There Is A Legacy Of Language And Culture And Religion. In Some Cases, Family Stories Told By Grandparents To Little Grandchildren. When I Say My Novels Are Set In Israel In The Last Seventy Years, This Entails The Fact That They Begin Hundreds Or Thousands Of Years Earlier In Time. Everybody Comes From Somewhere.