Quotes from Sayed Kashua

I'm totally secular, but I'm scared like hell of God.

Israeli independence - what we Arabs call al-Naqba, 'The Catastrophe' - it created Palestinian identity more than anything else.

The Palestinians have tried everything, and by God, it's Israel's governments that taught us that the only thing the Israelis appreciate is force.

Israel defines Palestinians more than anything else.

A lot of my friends in my student days complained about how their parents made them play an instrument when they were kids. I always felt compassion for them and didn't believe a parent could be so cruel, but when I check today, those complaining friends grew up to be quite successful, and many of them are now making their children play.

I use a lot of humor, and I follow the saying that if you want to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh first; otherwise, they will shoot you.

I'm always sad when Dad doesn't like my columns. He waits for them every week and usually likes them, in which case he doesn't say a word - it's only if he's critical that he bothers to call.

I don't really wake up in the morning and say, 'Ohmigod, I'm a Palestinian in a Jewish state.' I wake up in the morning and say, 'Ohmigod, I have to make sandwiches for my kids.'

Whom do you speak to about introducing a leap year? Is it heresy to request such a thing? Why do the Jews have one and we don't?

Americans like to add the word 'super' when they're describing things.

I very much hope that when my wife reads my writings so she reads it as if she is a character and not the real one. Sometimes she takes it too personally.

Sometimes I wonder if there is any hope left for an Israeli-Palestinian discourse that is built on equality and liberty rather than a fruitless discourse of master and servant.

Sometimes I can write very angry columns, but I know that it doesn't work.

It's the friends that make you survive this flat place called the Midwest.

Like with all the Arabs, they use the 'suspect procedure' on me. I arrive four hours before the flight. They do a body search in a back room behind the curtain and then escort me onto the plane because they're afraid that on the way I might pick up a bomb from someone.

When there's a revolution in Egypt, you can't really get depressed about not knowing what happens after you die. When there are millions out on the streets, that's not the time to start panicking about contracting swine flu.

They're completely American. When I served my son falafel in a pita the other day, he said, 'Daddy, this taco is very good.'

It always seems to me that my life would look completely different if I didn't have to take care of the rent.

Americans are connected to the situation in the West Bank and Gaza and Israel because, generally speaking, Jewish Americans were always there, and many American Jewish people connect their nationality to the Israeli one.

Back in Israel, I would spend much effort and plenty of money on presents when I went abroad, even if it was only for two days.

How I'd like to start a new life in a distant land. Not because of racism or politics. But to be in a place that I knew hardly anything about, in a place where I wouldn't even care to know the prime minister's name. A place where names and faces would have no meaning for me.

I conduct all my nighttime activities under the assumption that my wife is awake, that she never falls asleep.

The smell of onion is the most effective thing for relieving stinging eyes irritated by tear gas.

'Arab Labor' was light, snappy. We got emotional over things, but from a safe place, from the terrace.