“Novelists are a special breed. They cannot genuinely trust anything they have not seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands (Salon, 20 February 2009).”

“Like most novelists, I like to do exactly the opposite of what I'm told. It's in my nature as a novelist. Novelists can't trust anything they haven't seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands. (Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech, JERUSALEM POST, Feb. 15, 2009)”

“To know one’s own state is not a simple matter. One cannot look directly at one’s own face with one’s own eyes, for example. One has no choice but to look at one’s reflection in the mirror. Through experience, we come to believe that the image is correct, but that is all.”

“It is the same with anything - you have to learn through your own experience, paying your own way. You can't learn it from a book.”

“Dreaming is the day job of novelists, but sharing our dreams is a still more important task for us. We cannot be novelists without this sense of sharing something.”

“If you really want to know what's happening here and now, you've got to use your own eyes and your own judgment.”

“It's true though: time moves in its own special way in the middle of the night," the bartender says, loudly striking a book match and lighting a cigarette. "You can't fight it.”