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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.
Etgar Keret -
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
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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.
Etgar Keret -
I have always thought that Heaven is a place for people who had had a good life, but that is not true. God is merciful and way too good to make it so. The Heaven is just a place for people who could not be really happy while living on Earth. I was once told that people who commit suicide are taken back on Earth to repeat life from the very beginning because if they did not like it once, it did not mean they would not like it the next time. But those who did not fit in on Earth at all, ended up here. Everyone comes to Heaven in their own way.
Etgar Keret -
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 -
I think that becoming a parent kind of made me try to be more responsible. And it made me much more stressful.
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 -
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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Apparently, I'm very, very popular in jails. They often ask me to come and speak.
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 -
I like smoking pot, but I'm not the kind of guy who smokes every day.
Etgar Keret -
If you want to learn how to be happy, you have to know what is sadness first.
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
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What connects me so strongly to Israel is the fact that I'm second generation.
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 -
As a monogamous creature, I feel sometimes that it fills up a function that affairs have in married people's life.
Etgar Keret -
Life keeps being a beautiful and frustrating experience.
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