Every Decent Man Had To Be Against

In Writing A Novel, The Writer Must Be Able To Identify Emotionally And Intellectually With Two Or Three Or Four Contradicting Perspectives And Give Each Of Them Very A Convincing Voice. It's Like Playing Tennis With Yourself And You Have To Be On Both Sides Of The Yard. You Have To Be On Both Sides, Or All Sides If There Are More Than Two Sides.

When I Was Little, My Ambition Was To Grow Up To Be A Book. Not A Writer. People Can Be Killed Like Ants. Writers Are Not Hard To Kill Either. But Not Books: However Systematically You Try To Destroy Them, There Is Always A Chance That A Copy Will Survive And Continue To Enjoy A Shelf-life In Some Corner On An Out-of-the-way Library Somehwere In Reykjavik, Valladolid Or Vancouver.

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. And, Sometimes In Very, Very Different Places, Because We All Come From Somewhere, Especially Here In Israel.

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.

I Often Write About Reconciling. Reconciling, Or Maybe Half-reconciling Between Antagonists, Between People Who Are Deadly Enemies. I Write About Reconciliation, But Not As A Miracle, As A Slow, Gradual Process Of Mutual Discovery - Discovering One Another. I Write About Sad, Sober, Sometimes Heart-breaking Compromises.