Etgar Keret Quotes

47 quotes in 952 categories

• When I write, I never know the endings. What I think works in [my] stories is the fact that when I write, I really want…
• 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…
• The one who swallows cactuses with spines should not complain about hemorrhoids.
• 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.…
• 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,…
• 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…
• 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…
• I write in a slangy colloquial speech that has not been common in the Israeli tradition of writing, and that is one of the things…
• 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…
• 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.…
• 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:…
• Sometimes, when you are in a really constrained situation, it makes you more focused about what you want to say and where you're heading. The…
• 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,…
• Before I started to make films, I didn't give much thought to the way the characters were physically positioned in the story world.
• I always have a story in my head that needs to be written, or at least I think I do. But I usually can't find…
• I was first introduced to Kafka's writing during my compulsory army-service basic training. During that period, Kafka's fiction felt hyperrealistic.
• In Israel, the role of the writer is dictated by the language in which you write. Writers see themselves as cultural prophets.
• In the army you feel violated - there's no private space. Writing was a life-saver, a way of recovering private territory.
• My stories are very compact. I want them to say the most complex things in the simplest way.
• The reason I write is that I'm not in dialogue with my emotions; writing puts me in touch with myself.

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