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People in Israel would write in a high register, they wouldn't write colloquial speech. I do a special take on colloquial speech. When I started writing, I thought [the language] was telling the story of this country: old people in a young nation, very religious, very conservative, very tight-assed, but also very anarchistic, very open-minded. It's all in the language, and that's one thing that doesn't translate.
Etgar Keret -
Often, the stories are very much like trust falls. You fall, and you hope the story's going to catch you.
Etgar Keret
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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 -
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 -
The reason I write is that I'm not in dialogue with my emotions; writing puts me in touch with myself.
Etgar Keret -
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 -
Apparently, I'm very, very popular in jails. They often ask me to come and speak.
Etgar Keret -
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
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I think that becoming a parent kind of made me try to be more responsible. And it made me much more stressful.
Etgar Keret -
I've always had a very developed superego. I also had a very powerful id, but there was no ego in the middle. So writing was always like letters sent from the id to the superego, saying, "What's going on here?" What I loved about writing was that I was totally weightless. I was amazed at the fact that I could be myself without being afraid that anyone would get hurt.
Etgar Keret -
The best stories you usually hear are stories that people feel some type of urgency about.
Etgar Keret -
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 -
In Israel, the role of the writer is dictated by the language in which you write. Writers see themselves as cultural prophets.
Etgar Keret -
I like smoking pot, but I'm not the kind of guy who smokes every day.
Etgar Keret
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Life keeps being a beautiful and frustrating experience.
Etgar Keret -
If you want to learn how to be happy, you have to know what is sadness first.
Etgar Keret -
What connects me so strongly to Israel is the fact that I'm second generation.
Etgar Keret -
As a monogamous creature, I feel sometimes that it fills up a function that affairs have in married people's life.
Etgar Keret -
I think that, in Israel, the greatest fear that people have, and I have it, too, is fear of genocide.
Etgar Keret -
Writing is very castrating in the moment. Fiction in general, it has no function, nobody asks for it.
Etgar Keret