Etgar Keret

“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?”

“When you're having an asthma attack, you don't have any breath. When you don't have any breath, it's hard to speak. You're limited by the amount of air you can spend from your lungs. That's not much, something between three to six words. It gives the word a meaning. You're searching through the piles of words in your head, picking the most important ones. And they have a cost. It's not like the healthy people that take out every word that has accumulated in their head like garbage. When someone, while having an asthma attack, says "I love you" or "I really love you", there's a difference. A word difference. And a word is a lot, because that word could have been "sit", "Ventolin" or even "ambulance".”

“Being published in Arabic is a strong and consistent wish I have. I live in the Middle East and want to be in some sort of an unpragmatic dialogue with my neighbors.”

“I write in a slangy colloquial speech that has not been common in the Israeli tradition of writing, and that is one of the things that gets lost a little in translation.”

“Dad said I had no respect for money and that if I didn't learn when I was little when was I going to learn? Kids who get Bart Simpson dolls at the drop of a hat turn into punks who steal from convenience stores, ‘cos they wind up thinking they can have whatever they want, just like that. So instead of a Bart doll he bought me an ugly porcelain pig with a slot in its back, and now I'll grow up to be okay, now I won't turn into a punk.”

“I was first introduced to Kafka's writing during my compulsory army-service basic training. During that period, Kafka's fiction felt hyperrealistic.”

“In the army you feel violated - there's no private space. Writing was a life-saver, a way of recovering private territory.”

“When I ask him if he thinks there's a moral to his story, he says he's sure there must be, but doesn't know exactly what it is. "Maybe," he says after a short pause, "it's that this world is full of lizards, and even though there's nothing we can do about it, it is always helpful to find out how big they are.”

“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.”

“Sometimes, when you are in a really constrained situation, it makes you more focused about what you want to say and where you're heading. The most beautiful love poems that were ever written are sonnets, composed in a very constraining form.”

“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.”

“Me, when it comes to religion, I have no God. When I'm cool, I don't need anyone, and when I'm feeling shitty and this big empty hole opens up inside me, I just know there's never been a god that could fill it and there never will be.”

“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.”

“שפתו של קרת היא ספרותית מדוברת. המספר שלו אינו כותב, הוא מדבר, בעברית של ישראלי בן גילו של קרת. אין מעבר לשוני מוגדר בין המספר לבין הדיאלוגים, הטקסט זורם באותו ערוץ לשוני, הסופר מייצג את שפת גיבוריו.”

“סיפור זה בסך הכול דרך לחלוק עם אנשים משהו שאתה מרגיש, משהו אינטימי, לפעמים אפילו מביך.”

“אין דבר יותר כיף מלראות את הילד שלך מסתכל עליך ככה.”

“תגיד לי – עזוב סקס, מתי בפעם האחרונה מישהי חייכה אליך?”

“אף פעם לא ירו אותי מתותח.”

“לא היה בטוח שזאת שאלה שמנומס לשאול כאן. בכלל, הוא רצה לשאול אותו מה זה בדיוק המקום הזה, ואם יש פה עוד הרבה אנשים, או שקרים, או איך שהם לא קוראים לעצמם, חוץ ממנו, אבל חשש שגם זאת שאלה רגישה מדי.”