The information. It's out there, Rebbe. This part is not a sin.
Sometimes I feel like those born-again folk, always working on their faith, but I'm always working on my atheism. We all have our struggles.
I don't think it's the writer's job to give answers or to give opinions. In fact, when a writer has answers, I think the work ends up being corrupted. It becomes didactic. What a book does is share a consciousness and invite people to explore the questions as best as you can.
Every book is vulnerable, and every book is nerve-wracking, but I've never been both so excited and terrified to have a book coming into the world. It's an expressly loaded subject, one on which you can't win.
I'm just very interested, fascinated, heartbroken, obsessed with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and our need to find peace on that front... Everyone's always, like, victim and avenger at the same time.
So writing stories is not easier in comparison to the playwriting or translation; the stories are easier in league with them.
Empathy is what obsesses me. And watching empathy recede in the world is terrifying.
It's so easy to call something a Jewish story or a gay story or a woman's story. Aesthetically, if a story is not universal, it has failed. Your obligation is to the story. One rule creatively, and emotionally, is its universality.
When I was living in Jerusalem, I used to write in a coffee shop called Tmol Shilshom. I'd sit at the same table every day and work. And right next to my seat was a weathered wingback chair by a window.
