"We must see what in the Israeli identity - in the Israeli - we can give to other people rather than speaking so often of taking, expanding territory."

"The most difficult and complicated part of the writing process is the beginning."

"And this is one of the major questions of our lives: how we keep boundaries, what permission we have to cross boundaries, and how we do so."

"I don't think that when Zionism began there was a claim that we were losing - even in part - our capacity to contribute to other peoples."

"One of the dreams of Zionism was to be a bridge. Instead, we are creating exclusion between the East and the West instead of creating bridges; we are contributing to the conflict between East and West by our stupid desire to have more."

"So with truth - there is a certain moment when one can say, this is the truth and here I put a dot, a stop, and I go to another thing. A judge has to put an end to a deliberation. But for a historian, there's never an end to the past. It can go on and on and on."

"The question of boundaries is a major question of the Jewish people because the Jews are the great experts of crossing boundaries. They have a sense of identity inside themselves that doesn't permit them to cross boundaries with other people."

"Intimate relationships are a gold mine for literature to explore, to understand, to describe."

"Traveling is one expression of the desire to cross boundaries."