Keret Quotes

#1. Etgar means "challenge." And my family name is Keret, which means "urban." So my name is "urban challenge." My joke is, it's a good description of a birth but a strange name for a human being.

Etgar Keret

#2. I was born at six months, and I weighed 900 grams [less than two pounds]. I have a very heroic birth story.

Etgar Keret

#3. When I say a spoken Hebrew sentence, half of it is like the King James Bible and half of it is a hip-hop lyric. It has a roller-coaster effect.

Etgar Keret

#4. I used to feel that if I say something's wrong, I have to say how it could be made right. But what I learned from Kurt Vonnegut was that I could write stories that say I may not have a solution, but this is wrong - that's good enough.

Etgar Keret

#5. Me, when it comes to religion, I have no God. When I'm cool, I don't need anyone, and when I'm feeling shitty and this big empty hole opens up inside me, I just know there's never been a god that could fill it and there never will be.

Etgar Keret

#6. Writing is very castrating in the moment. Fiction in general, it has no function, nobody asks for it.

Etgar Keret

#7. I have to admit that talking authoritatively about my students' stories can make me feel, at times, like an astronaut who has just landed on a new planet and insists on giving guided tours to its inhabitants.

Etgar Keret

#8. I really believe hatred is not a primal emotion, in that you can't find it in nature. It's basically some kind of distortion of fear.

Etgar Keret

#9. I don't like the expression "writer's block" because I think it presupposes that you have a problem with your plumbing. I really think it's the other way around.

Etgar Keret

#10. You don't need to use the language of God to ask where the restrooms are.

Etgar Keret

#11. I rarely return to characters. My characters, at least most of them, are much more a part of that superorganism that is the story than separate and independent creatures.

Etgar Keret

#12. For Himme, the cumulative effect of the cumulative listening to the cumulative song was cumulatively distressing.

Etgar Keret

#13. The fact is that everything I have in my pockets is carefully chosen so I'll always be prepared. Everything is there so I can be at an advantage at the moment of truth. Actually, that's not accurate. Everything's there so I won't be at a disadvantage at the moment of truth.

Etgar Keret

#14. In the army you feel violated - there's no private space. Writing was a life-saver, a way of recovering private territory.

Etgar Keret

#15. If someone gives you a piece of advice that sounds right and feels right, use it. If someone gives you a piece of advice that sounds right and feels wrong, don't waste so much as a single second on it. It may be fine for someone else, but not for you.

Etgar Keret

#16. The story I had written wasn't the creased, stit-smeared paper now sitting in the bottom of the trash can on the street. That page was just a pipeline through which I could transmit my feelings from my minds to his.

Etgar Keret

#17. Hebrew was frozen, like frozen peas, fresh out of the Bible.

Etgar Keret

#18. But I felt then the same way Nicky did, that I was getting myself more life. Not necessarily a better life, not a life more promising than the one I already had. But because I thought this life was in addition to and not instead of, I devoured it without a second's hesitation.

Etgar Keret

#19. It's amazing how people can sound like retards when they're talking to their girlfriend, especially if they really love her a lot. Because when you're just fucking someone you make a point of keeping your cool, but when you're really in love - it can sound pretty repulsive.

Etgar Keret

#20. When I write a story, I have no idea what I'm doing. All I know is that I want to share something with my readers. The whole idea of writing is this place where you lose control, where you're irresponsible - it's a very liberating place.

Etgar Keret

#21. Until he turned twelve, Nimrod was a shitty person. The kind of whiner that, if he wasn't your best friend, you'd have kicked his ass a long time ago. And then one day, just before his bar mitzvah, they put insoles in his shoes, and suddenly the guy was a whole new human being.

Etgar Keret

#22. There should be an age limit for patients, he thinks as he takes off his shoes. You just have to say to them, You lived long enough. From now on, think of what's left as a bonus, a gift without an exchange slip. It hurts? Stay in bed. It still hurts? Wait: Either you'll die or it'll pass.

Etgar Keret

#23. You'll never know what's happening inside the heads of other people.

Etgar Keret

#24. What connects me so strongly to Israel is the fact that I'm second generation.

Etgar Keret

#25. For three months,
a person sits and looks at you,
imagining a kiss.

Etgar Keret

#26. If we're a family and your brother wishes you death, it's not a very happy family.

Etgar Keret

#27. As a child, I never wanted my parents to be unhappy, which meant that I would always contemplate what would make them happy.

Etgar Keret

#28. So if you're really unhappy down there, and if all kinds of people are telling you that you're suffering from severe perceptual disorders, look for your own way of getting here, and when you find it, could you please bring some cards, 'cause we're getting pretty tired of the marbles. - from Pipes

Etgar Keret

#29. Most of the Jewish writer friends I have are American, and I feel closer to them because they're always obsessed with one issue - identity: what does it mean to be an American Jew?

Etgar Keret

#30. Sometimes the stories are smarter than me, and suddenly these things start to make sense.

Etgar Keret

#31. If you want to learn how to be happy, you have to know what is sadness first.

Etgar Keret

#32. I think that, in Israel, the greatest fear that people have, and I have it, too, is fear of genocide.

Etgar Keret

#33. I often give this metaphor where I say that writing short fiction is like surfing, while writing a novel is like navigating with your car. So when you navigate with your car, you want to get somewhere. When you surf, you don't want to get somewhere, you just don't want to fall off your board.

Etgar Keret

#34. It's funny, but I think my stories - the good ones - they're much smarter than I am.

Etgar Keret

#35. My mother, for example, told the German officer not to kill her. She'd make it worth his while. And then, when they were doing it, she pulled a knife out of her belt and sliced open his chest, just like she used to open chicken breasts to stuff with rice for the Sabbath meal.

Etgar Keret

#36. You can remember without seeing it.

Etgar Keret

#37. I remember a point in [writing] the story where I said, "This isn't working, I should go and buy something at the supermarket or my wife will kill me." Then I said, "No, I'll go on."

Etgar Keret

#38. Collaborating with your wife is amazing because you are doing something together with a person you truly love and know and discover things about her in that process which you have never had discovered on other circumstances.

Etgar Keret

#39. As a monogamous creature, I feel sometimes that it fills up a function that affairs have in married people's life.

Etgar Keret

#40. His whole body was completely still, except the wings, which were still fluttering a little, like when someone dies. That's when he finally understood that of all the things the angel had told him, nothing was true. That he wasn't even an angel, just a liar with wings.

Etgar Keret

#41. Life is one heck of an invention. It is better than the iPhone 4S and Coke Zero combined.

Etgar Keret

#42. Grandma Natasha was sitting in the tent watching public service announcements on TV. They were showing a blond model in a bikini doing the backstroke in a river of blood flowing along Arlozorov Street. "She's not a real blonde," Grandma Natasha grumbled, pointing at the model. "She has it bleached.

Etgar Keret

#43. Being ambivalent doesn't mean that you're a relevatist, that anything goes; it just means that you show the complexity of life. Life is always complex.

Etgar Keret

#44. All my writing-life people kept telling me that I should stop writing short stories and start writing novels: my agent, my Israeli publisher, my foreign ones, my bank manager - they all felt and keep feeling that I'm doing something wrong here.

Etgar Keret

#45. A word is a lot.

Etgar Keret

#46. The one who swallows cactuses with spines should not complain about hemorrhoids.

Etgar Keret

#47. Thirty miles is a long way, even by car, and on foot it's a thousand times more, especially for a dog, whose step is like a quarter of a human's.

Etgar Keret

#48. The writer is neither saint nor tzaddik nor prophet standing at the gate; he's just another sinner who has a somewhat sharper awareness and uses slightly more precise language to describe the inconceivable reality of our world.

Etgar Keret

#49. I think the typical way is that usually Holocaust survivors are known to be very quiet and full of anxiety, many of them don't like life, don't trust people. But my parents were children during the Holocaust. And my father was very optimistic.

Etgar Keret

#50. I don't have Facebook or Twitter accounts yet. Being a compulsive storyteller, I always make up for myself discouraging stories about how such accounts will get me into embarrassing and time-consuming situations.

Etgar Keret

#51. He tells them that there is a line that separates killing bugs from killing frogs, and that no matter how hard it is, that line must never be crossed

Etgar Keret

#52. There were lots of lies along the way in life. Lies without arms, lies that were ill, lies that did harm, lies that could kill. Lies on foot, or behind the wheel, black-tie lies, and lies that could steal.

Etgar Keret

#53. I'm not saying that I don't experience people in life as evil, but writing is not a place of alienation; writing is the place where we can try to be human.

Etgar Keret

#54. What you experience in the army, aged 18 to 21, is what you take through all your life. You cross invisible lines: you shoot someone, get shot, break into people's houses. It's naive to think you won't carry anything into your life.

Etgar Keret

#55. My stories are very compact. I want them to say the most complex things in the simplest way.

Etgar Keret

#56. During the war, there were people wishing me death, wishing my son death, wishing my wife death in very graphic ways. In the past, I would go overseas and I would say, "Israel is like my family: we disagree, but we're all brothers." I can't say that anymore, because life proves me wrong.

Etgar Keret

#57. Rabbits are played. Nowadays it's all about the turtles. Tell them it's a ninja, they'll freak.

Etgar Keret

#58. As the son of Holocaust survivors, this is life - you're put in a corner, and you have to get out. I believe that you can always get out.

Etgar Keret

#59. When you work on a graphic novel or a film with people you've been together through a lot and you've exposed your secrets and weaker sides to each other.

Etgar Keret

#60. It took a lot to understand that the interest in both writing a story and reading it is not in the objective dangers someone takes. You don't have to fight snakes or wake up in a strange apartment to have a story; it's about what goes on inside your mind and soul.

Etgar Keret

#61. In Israel, the role of the writer is dictated by the language in which you write. Writers see themselves as cultural prophets.

Etgar Keret

#62. My father - I once asked him what was his greatest achievement. He said his greatest achievement was that he fought in five wars in the infantry, always on the front line, and never hurt anybody.

Etgar Keret

#63. Translators are like ninjas. If you notice them, they're no good.

Etgar Keret

#64. The amazing thing about an artistic collaboration is that it is as intense and intimate as a romantic one. Sometimes even more so.

Etgar Keret

#65. An awfully beautiful story, but it isn't mine.

Etgar Keret

#66. In my stories I can kiss the girls I want to kiss and punch the girls I want to punch. Nobody pays a price for it.

Etgar Keret

#67. Often, the stories are very much like trust falls. You fall, and you hope the story's going to catch you.

Etgar Keret

#68. When I started writing my stories, I thought that not only nobody outside my language, but nobody outside my neighbourhood would get them.

Etgar Keret

#69. Ehud was tall and strong and was always quiet. Lots of people thought that Ehud was quiet because he was stupid. That wasn't true. He may not have been the smartest kid on the block, but he was no moron either.

Etgar Keret

#70. I think that, in Hebrew, it's like the language creates a more unique and specific universe even before the story.

Etgar Keret

#71. Being published in Arabic is a strong and consistent wish I have. I live in the Middle East and want to be in some sort of an unpragmatic dialogue with my neighbors.

Etgar Keret

#72. I think there are some artists whose works are misanthropic.

Etgar Keret

#73. I like smoking pot, but I'm not the kind of guy who smokes every day.

Etgar Keret

#74. Even as a very young man, I knew that my family is like a plant. Uproot it, and it will wilt. Pluck away at it, and it will die. But leave it to thrive in the soil, untouched, and it will weather both gods and winds. It is born with the soil, and it will live so long as the soil shall live.

Etgar Keret

#75. This idea where, in this safe haven for Jews, Jews will threaten to kill other Jews, it wasn't in the brochure.

Etgar Keret

#76. In the last war, people became vocal from the right-wing point of view: if you're liberal, then you're a traitor.

Etgar Keret

#77. Apparently, I'm very, very popular in jails. They often ask me to come and speak.

Etgar Keret

#78. When I was a kid, I wanted to make my parents happy. I'd always say to them, "What do you want me to do? Do sports? Be rich? Be funny?" My mother would say, "Whatever we want from you, you already gave us - we wanted you to be alive, and you made it."

Etgar Keret

#79. I was first introduced to Kafka's writing during my compulsory army-service basic training. During that period, Kafka's fiction felt hyperrealistic.

Etgar Keret

#80. For me taking a pragmatic decision when it comes to art is almost an oxymoron. The reason I first picked up a pen and wrote a story had nothing pragmatic in it.

Etgar Keret

#81. Life keeps being a beautiful and frustrating experience.

Etgar Keret

#82. Making up characters and places and plots, unlike fixing your plumbing or doing dishes, is anything but practical or rational. I write what needs to be written the way that seems genuinely right.

Etgar Keret

#83. My first and biggest love was always fiction writing. But it is a very lonely pastime.

Etgar Keret

#84. Writing is a way of living other lives. It is a way of expanding your life. It's not actually living a different life, it just means that you're hungry for life. There are so many things you want to do.

Etgar Keret

#85. Often in writing programs, articulation and clarity are more important than what you actually say.

Etgar Keret

#86. I think living in Israel and wanting to change reality is the best prescription for never-ending writer's block.

Etgar Keret

#87. I think when you write, you should call it a "writing spree." I don't write every day, and I don't write regularly.

Etgar Keret

#88. Writing a story is kind of like surfing, as opposed to the novel, where you use a GPS to get somewhere. With surfing, you kind of jump.

Etgar Keret

#89. I see creative-writing classes as some sort of AA meeting. It is more of a support group for people who write than an actual course in which you learn writing skills. This support group is extremely important because there is something very lonely about writing.

Etgar Keret

#90. Nobody else in the world would look at writing as craftsmanship - it's totally this Protestant hardworking ethic. You go into this kind of infinite space of imagination and you fence yourself in with all kinds of laws.

Etgar Keret

#91. In Israel, there is this reduction of the political discourse to something that is very limited. It's as if you have that pitch that only dogs can hear. Sometimes I feel I speak at such a pitch that very few people around me communicate with what I'm saying.

Etgar Keret

#92. When my books were translated, it was always about the characters, because the unique language aspect was lost in translation.

Etgar Keret

#93. According to Gur's theory of boredom, everything that happens in the world today is because of boredom: love, war, inventions, fake fireplaces - ninety-five percent of all that is pure boredom.

Etgar Keret

#94. The best stories you usually hear are stories that people feel some type of urgency about.

Etgar Keret

#95. If you scare somebody enough, they stop being rational.

Etgar Keret

#96. Why does a father have to protect his son?" I thought for a moment before answering. "Look," I said as I stroked his cheek, "the world we live in can sometimes be very tough. And it's only fair that everyone who's born into it should have at least one person who'll be there to protect him.

Etgar Keret

#97. It's kind of a reflex for me to ignore my own wishes and think about other people first.

Etgar Keret

#98. Generally, all my life, I have had strong friction with life - I was a problematic soldier, I was kicked out of the army, I was in fights. There was something about writing that was a way of experimenting with this emotion.

Etgar Keret

#99. He felt full of a dense and sour substance that was blocking his chest, and it wasn't grief. After all those years, life now seemed like no more than a trap, a maze, not even a maze, just a room that was all walls, no door.

Etgar Keret

#100. I write what needs to be written the way that seems genuinely right. If what comes out of it are stories, then it is my vocation to believe in them and in the fact that they'll interest people and maybe affect their lives.

Etgar Keret