If people visit books as they do tourist sites, looking for the famous passages they have heard about, looking for the best-seller they were told abo… - Shulamith Hareven

The best encounter is not between Jews and Jews, or between Arabs and Arabs. The best encounter-and such things have happened-is between Jews and Arabs who know one another personally, intimately, and who can tell each other honestly what their anxieties and fear were, what they and their families felt when things happened as they did. The shock of such encounters is great. People learn things they did not know or had repressed, or that their leaders or teachers did not tell them because they did not dare break the silence-not necessarily because they had evil intentions. A different truth is revealed, and not through documents: documents do not talk; a person talks, a family talks. Then something happens: people who have recognized each others' anguish are people who are capable of making peace. People who know the anguish of one side remain stuck in the past, which becomes less and less relevant as the years pass.

The greatest leaders the world has known were never charismatic or dependent on their public's falling in love with them.

From now on there will always be a great self-consciousness between us, as between people who have gone too far.