I think a playful critique is good for all of us, and that's basically how I see satire functioning. But I'm not interested in a kind of contemptuous satirical vision; I try always, even when I'm knowingly being satirical, to also be humane, but I mean, let's face it: there's plenty in American life to make fun of, and we all participate in it.

It's not that I sit down and write great stuff without thinking, not at all. Most of it is terrible. But the stuff that feels fun and fresh to me tends to happen fairly unthinkingly.

If you don't have people that the reader cares about and stories that are gripping, you've got nothing.

I felt more doubtful than usual with 'Goon Squad,' because I knew that the book's genre wasn't easily named - Novel? Stories? Novel-in-stories? - and I worried that its lack of a clear category would count against it. My hopes for it were pretty modest.

The bottom line is that I like my first drafts to be blind, unconscious, messy efforts; that's what gets me the best material.

I haven't had trouble with writer's block. I think it's because my process involves writing very badly. My first drafts are filled with lurching, cliched writing, outright flailing around. Writing that doesn't have a good voice or any voice. But then there will be good moments.

I think the big lesson I've learned is that it's very hard to write satire in America because almost immediately, whatever you've thought of turns out to come true, or sometimes it already was true.

When I pick up a book that's, you know, wreathed in laurels, I expect a lot, and that doesn't give the book its best chance to shine.

Comparison is painful. Don't be cowed by other people's pretty pictures. When you feel unimpressive, or irrelevant, that has nothing to do with what you're actually capable of.

Running in heels can be treacherous, and don't get me started on fake eyelashes!

Strike and struggle precede success, even in the dictionary.

Wake up in the morning with a specific goal to look forward to.

I am used to being politically homeless, which I think is a very, very Jewish position.

I'm not someone who from a young age imagined myself being a writer or had dreams of being a novelist or anything like that, but I was always very driven by ideas and by values, and that is the reason I got into journalism.

Despite the fact that the vast majority of Israeli Jews are not Orthodox, the ultra-Orthodox hold the keys not just to Israel's Jewish sacred places, but to the life cycle events - conversions, weddings, divorces, burials - of the country's more than six million Jews.

It is a strange experience to have another person spit on you.

One of the casualties of Israel becoming an increasingly partisan issue has been American Jews themselves, who vote overwhelmingly Democratic and who see Israel's rightward turn as betraying fundamental liberal values.

Those who call themselves anti-Zionists usually insist they are not anti-Semites. But I struggle to see what else to call an ideology that seeks to eradicate only one state in the world - the one that happens to be the Jewish one - while empathetically insisting on the rights of self-determination for every other minority.

While there are perfectly legitimate criticisms that one can make of Israel or the actions of its government - and I have never been shy about making them - those criticisms cross the line into anti-Semitism when they ascribe evil, almost supernatural powers to Israel in a manner that replicates classic anti-Semitic slanders.

The conspiracy theory of the Jew as the hypnotic conspirator, the duplicitous manipulator, the sinister puppeteer is one with ancient roots and a bloody history.

In my experience, American office Christmas parties mean that everyone gets a thimbleful of lukewarm Champagne in a plastic cup.

Part of the beauty of the way Australians hang out isn't just how relaxed it is, but the inclusive, rolling nature of how they socialize.

In the States, time with friends can feel a bit like those PETA videos of chickens on factory farms: slotted and squeezed into tight compartments.

Australians have more fun. They just do. I guess I should not be surprised by this fact given that this is the place that birthed both Hugh Jackman and Kylie Minogue.