" Israelis are Jews who have misplaced their sense of humor. I like men and women who don’t fit well in the dominant culture, or, as Álvaro de Campos calls them, strangers in this place as in every other, accidental in life as in the soul. I like outsiders, phantoms wandering the cobwebbed halls of the doomed castle where life must be lived. David Grossman may love Israel, but he wanders its cobwebbed halls, just as his namesake Vasily wandered Russia’s. To write is to know that you are not home. I stopped loving Odysseus as soon as he landed back in Ithaca. I love the idea of homeland, but not the actual return to one. "

― Rabih Alameddine , An Unnecessary Woman