Etgar Keret Quotes
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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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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. I think there are some artists whose works are misanthropic. When I see this kind of stuff, I think, they're smart, but I don't need art to tell me people are assholes. I can just go into the streets.
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Apparently, I'm very, very popular in jails. They often ask me to come and speak.
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It's funny, but I think my stories - the good ones - they're much smarter than I am.
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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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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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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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When my books were translated, it was always about the characters, because the unique language aspect was lost in translation.
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I like smoking pot, but I'm not the kind of guy who smokes every day.
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Life keeps being a beautiful and frustrating experience.
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I tried once in my life to write a novel. I had written something like 80 pages of it when my laptop got stolen. When I told people this, they acted as if something tragic had happened, but I kind of felt relieved, grateful to the thief who saved me from another year of something that felt more like homework than fun.
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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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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 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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You don't need to use the language of God to ask where the restrooms are.
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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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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.
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If you scare somebody enough, they stop being rational.
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You'll never know what's happening inside the heads of other people.
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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.
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He misses the feeling of creating something out of something. That’s right — something out of something. Because something out of nothing is when you make something up out of thin air, in which case it has no value. Anybody can do that. But something out of something means it was really there the whole time, inside you, and you discover it as part of something new, that’s never happened before.
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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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I usually start writing stories from tone and not from content - kind of like people who create music and invent the lyrics later on.
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I don't need art to tell me people are assholes. I can just go into the streets.