The maxim that flying time is wasted time liberates me from my anxieties and guilt feelings, and it strips me of all ambitions, leaving room for a different sort of existence. A happy, idiotic existence, the kind that doesn’t try to make the most of time but is satisfied with merely finding the most enjoyable way to spend it.

I always have a story in my head that needs to be written, or at least I think I do. But I usually can’t find the time to write it.

He felt full of a dense and sour substance that was blocking his chest, and it wasn’t grief. After all those years, life now seemed like no more than a trap, a maze, not even a maze, just a room that was all walls, no door.

My mother, for example, told the German officer not to kill her. She’d make it worth his while. And then, when they were doing it, she pulled a knife out of her belt and sliced open his chest, just like she used to open chicken breasts to stuff with rice for the Sabbath meal.

What connects me so strongly to Israel is the fact that I’m second generation.

In the army you feel violated – there’s no private space. Writing was a life-saver, a way of recovering private territory.

Most of the Jewish writer friends I have are American, and I feel closer to them because they’re always obsessed with one issue – identity: what does it mean to be an American Jew?

Nobody else in the world would look at writing as craftsmanship – it’s totally this Protestant hardworking ethic. You go into this kind of infinite space of imagination and you fence yourself in with all kinds of laws.

I was first introduced to Kafka’s writing during my compulsory army-service basic training. During that period, Kafka’s fiction felt hyperrealistic.

It’s kind of a reflex for me to ignore my own wishes and think about other people first.