I Think There Are Some Artists Whose

All My Writing-life People Kept Telling Me That I Should Stop Writing Short Stories And Start Writing Novels: My Agent, My Israeli Publisher, My Foreign Ones, My Bank Manager - They All Felt And Keep Feeling That I'm Doing Something Wrong Here.

Making Up Characters And Places And Plots, Unlike Fixing Your Plumbing Or Doing Dishes, Is Anything But Practical Or Rational. I Write What Needs To Be Written The Way That Seems Genuinely Right.

This Idea Where, In This Safe Haven For Jews, Jews Will Threaten To Kill Other Jews, It Wasn't In The Brochure.

Etgar Means "challenge." And My Family Name Is Keret, Which Means "urban." So My Name Is "urban Challenge." My Joke Is, It's A Good Description Of A Birth But A Strange Name For A Human Being.

My Father - I Once Asked Him What Was His Greatest Achievement. He Said His Greatest Achievement Was That He Fought In Five Wars In The Infantry, Always On The Front Line, And Never Hurt Anybody.