If You Change Your Diet, Someone Will

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.

I'm Not Sure I'm Happy With Words Such As "task" Or "role" When They Are Attached To Literature. I Prefer To Talk About The Gift Of Literature Rather Than Its Role Or Task. You Know, Gynecology Has A Role; Sex Is A Gift. And Literature Is Not About Sending Messages.

Hebrew Has A System Of Tenses, Which Is, In A Big Way, Different From The English System Of Tenses, Probably Different Than Any European System Of Tenses, Which Means A Different Sense Of Reality, Which Means A Different Concept Of Time.

I Think There Are One Or Two Things Similar In Elizabethan English And Contemporary Hebrew. This Is Not To Say That Every One Of Us Israeli Writers Is A William Shakespeare, But There Is A Certain Similarity To Elizabethan English.

Black Box Is Not A Statement About Injustice Committed Against Sephardi Oriental Jews Or About The Extremism Of Religious Jews Or The Lack Of Imagination Of The Old Israeli Elites. It's A Human Story, In My View, First And Foremost About A Mystical Communion Between Enemies. This Is The Inner Story Of The Novel. This Is My Business As A Novelist. It Is Not About Positions And Ideas.