List of Etgar Keret Quotes

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.

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, Get Shot, Break Into People's Houses. It's Naive To Think You Won't Carry Anything Into Your Life.

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.

I Rarely Return To Characters. My Characters, At Least Most Of Them, Are Much More A Part Of That Superorganism That Is The Story Than Separate And Independent Creatures.

I See Creative-writing Classes As Some Sort Of Aa Meeting. It Is More Of A Support Group For People Who Write Than An Actual Course In Which You Learn Writing Skills. This Support Group Is Extremely Important Because There Is Something Very Lonely About Writing.

My Stories Are Very Compact. I Want Them To Say The Most Complex Things In The Simplest Way.

In The Army You Feel Violated - There's No Private Space. Writing Was A Life-saver, A Way Of Recovering Private Territory.

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 The Time To Write It.

In Israel, The Role Of The Writer Is Dictated By The Language In Which You Write. Writers See Themselves As Cultural Prophets.

I Was First Introduced To Kafka's Writing During My Compulsory Army-service Basic Training. During That Period, Kafka's Fiction Felt Hyperrealistic.

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, She Pulled A Knife Out Of Her Belt And Sliced Open His Chest, Just Like She Used To Open Chicken Breasts To Stuff With Rice For The Sabbath Meal.

I Don't Have Facebook Or Twitter Accounts Yet. Being A Compulsive Storyteller, I Always Make Up For Myself Discouraging Stories About How Such Accounts Will Get Me Into Embarrassing And Time-consuming Situations.