As a little girl, I didn't like stories about little girls. I liked stories about dragons and beasts and princes and princesses and fear and terror and the Four Musketeers and almost anything other than nice little girls making moral decisions about whether to tell the teacher about what the other little girl did or did not do.
If you want to teach women to be great writers, you should show them the best, and the best was often done by men. It was more often done by men than by women, if we're going to be truthful.
I am suspicious of writers who go looking for issues to address. Writers are neither preachers nor journalists. Journalists know much more than most writers about what's going on in the world. And if you want to change things, you do journalism.
I grew up in Haifa and enjoyed the wonderful beaches and Mount Carmel that rolls into the Mediterranean Sea. From my early days at home, I remember a strong encouragement to study.
Scientists and academics in particular focus on detail and the minutiae. When they talk to each other, they usually don't focus on the broad ideas; they don't focus on social interconnectedness. They focus on the task that they're doing.
My father, I think he played percussion in high school. My mother played piano when she was very young, but only for a brief while. I don't think she had a great teacher. In any case, neither of them were really into music at a young age.
There's a huge part of me that's thinking about perfection. I have to fight that urge, to try to live in the moment, reach for something that I might be hearing, and not second-guess myself.
From the very beginning, we just sort of made things up together. That's one of the great things about having a twin brother; you have a sort of feedback loop, where you can bounce things off of each other.
One of the great things about now vs. 10 or 12 years ago is we can see how the audience responds and the audience has an opportunity to be a community that engages each other and engages us and we're excited for that conversation.
I like teaching and the contact with young minds keeps one on one's toes.
