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.
— Sayed Kashua
I hate flying. The first time I flew with my wife, Najat, was the first time I'd ever flown in my life, and that was just a short flight to Turkey. I spent the whole time with my shirt pulled over my head. Then I got used to it.
Sometimes I can write very angry columns, but I know that it doesn't work.
There is really no place for individuals in Israel.
I wanted the Israeli mainstream audience to meet different kinds of Arabs - not just terrorists or politicians - and to listen to their language and their stories.
I wish I could be proud of being an Israeli citizen, but how can I do that when I'm not really recognized as a full citizen?
I wanted to bring likable Arabs into the average Israeli living room.
Israel defines Palestinians more than anything else.
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.
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.'
I don't know how it works with the Jews, but here in Beit Safafa, as in every self-respecting Arab community that is respected in turn by the state, there are no street names and no house numbers.
Since being on television, I have felt that my brain is degenerating.
Maybe I would go back to West Jerusalem without too much bother if I could lie to my kids and tell them they are equal citizens in a democratic state.
If there was genuine desire on the Israeli side, even without a solution, it would be possible to solve a large percentage of the problems between Israelis and Palestinians by means of simple statements from the Israelis.
Everything in London is quite good, apart from the weather: it's cold and rainy there, and the winter is long.
Somehow it seems that all parents are certain that they themselves were victims of abuse in school and that they will not allow this to happen to their children. Even though children can also be the cruelest group imaginable - especially the cutest of them.
After five years of marriage, she is still the most beautiful and attractive woman in the world.
As I see it, religion shouldn't interfere in a relationship.
We were, as Arabs in Israel, educated not to leave our villages, in order to protect our identity.
It's problematic being an Arab who writes in Hebrew.
I'm totally secular, but I'm scared like hell of God.
I'm not representing anyone - not Israelis, not Palestinians - I'm just a storyteller trying to raise more questions than give answers.
I don't like identity. We accept identities in Israel. We make them holy. But what does identity really mean?
I'm afraid of a gas leak, although I installed detectors. I'm afraid of a blown fuse that could cause a fire, and that's why I don't turn on electrical appliances at night.
Sometimes it seems that what really worries the Israeli governments, even more than the Muslim Brotherhood, is the real Egypt.
Well, you can't say you are lucky to live in Champaign, but I was lucky to be at the University of Illinois. It's a very international cosmopolitan community. That's very helpful.
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.
To be critical of television is almost like questioning the fact of God's existence.
My children don't even know who Fairuz is - a horrifying thought.
Sometimes I think that if we have to go back, then it certainly won't be to Jerusalem. Not to the Jerusalem beset with racism that we left at the height of the last Gaza war.
Somehow, since I became a family, every minute in which I am alone and not listening to two kids screaming in stereo feels like a vacation.
It always seems to me that my life would look completely different if I didn't have to take care of the rent.
Sometimes it seems as though all parents are certain that their children are victims of abuse by other children.
When I come to the airport, they always send me with all the other Israeli Arabs to the foreign workers' line. I don't mind. I feel like I belong more with all the people from abroad and the foreign workers than in the Israelis' line.
When Jewish youths walk down the street and demand the death of Arabs simply because they're Arabs, then I've lost my own small battle.
Many Israelis are educating their kids in a very nationalist, powerful identity, since kindergarten - and the Arabs as well.
All Israelis think Arabs steal cars.
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.'
I really just want to be a writer and a storyteller. But maybe pain is one of the things you have to feel in order to be creative.
Israeli independence - what we Arabs call al-Naqba, 'The Catastrophe' - it created Palestinian identity more than anything else.
I hate it when I have to abandon my children. I politely turn down most of the invitations I get from abroad and try to fly only when it's absolutely necessary.
There's a lot of hypocrisy and condescension in Israel's institutionalized support for Mubarak's tyrannical rule, in its backing of a corrupt leader who established a brutal secret police state to suppress his citizens and keep their mouths shut.
It's the friends that make you survive this flat place called the Midwest.
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 can never get to sleep without a book.
Thanksgiving is the only day of the year when most of the stores here are closed during the day and reopen after midnight. Even restaurants shut down for the holiday, except for the fast-food chains.
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.
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 always envied them, the owners of the cars with the white plates who can be seen around Jerusalem. I always wanted to be one of them. We call them U.N., even though U.N. are generally foreign correspondents with leased cars and yellow plates.
