Etgar Keret Quotes
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What connects me so strongly to Israel is the fact that I'm second generation. My parents said, "We have a place where we can just be ourselves and nobody says, 'Don't tell me your opinion, you damn Jew, go somewhere else.'" Then you go to this country and other Jews tell you to shut up. It's frustrating. I think that we have a bad government and that some people are fearful. They're going with the class bully. But I really truly believe - you read it in my stories - that deep inside, people have goodness.
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Often, the stories are very much like trust falls. You fall, and you hope the story's going to catch you.
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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.
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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.
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This idea where, in this safe haven for Jews, Jews will threaten to kill other Jews, it wasn't in the brochure.
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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."
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There are two kinds of people, those who like to sleep next to the wall, and those who like to sleep next to the people who push them off the bed.
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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.
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I think that, in Hebrew, it's like the language creates a more unique and specific universe even before the story.
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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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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?
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I was born at six months, and I weighed 900 grams less than two pounds. I have a very heroic birth story.
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Apparently, I'm very, very popular in jails. They often ask me to come and speak.
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For three months, a person sits and looks at you, imagining a kiss.
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You'll never know what's happening inside the heads of other people.
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Most of them were murderers. But when I went there to talk, they were the nicest people. I did a reading. I said, "Thank you," and then they said to me, "Could you talk some more?" And I said, "Why?" and they answered, "Most of us are in solitary confinement, so the moment you finish talking, they take us back to our cells. We like hanging out here together."
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When my books were translated, it was always about the characters, because the unique language aspect was lost in translation.
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The amazing thing about an artistic collaboration is that it is as intense and intimate as a romantic one. Sometimes even more so.
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I like smoking pot, but I'm not the kind of guy who smokes every day.
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If you scare somebody enough, they stop being rational.
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For my mother, having a family was the most important thing in her life. In the Second World War, it was a challenge - surviving physically and mentally and finding somebody who you loved and who was willing to be with you.
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You take a book, and what can you do with a book? Can you cook an egg on a book? No. Can you dig a hole? No. Is it a good weapon? No. The fact that it's good for nothing kind of makes it almost all-important.
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I don't need art to tell me people are assholes. I can just go into the streets.
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What connects me so strongly to Israel is the fact that I'm second generation.