Nathan Englander

“There's no safety in anything, but in the arts, there is really this idea of no promises. I didn't follow the writing dream for safety.”

“I moved to New York because I thrive there.”

“I'm very interested in how people change.”

“I think in circles; I speak in circles. I unravel my thoughts that way.”

“You spend so much time as a writer telling straight and linear stories.”

“Palestine isn't a state when it concerns statehood. When it comes to warring, it's a state, yes? The Palestinians, they live in a country, for the purpose of war.”

“For a book to function... it has to be a functioning reality. The character has to be real, and I imagine that's exactly what happens for a spy who is in deep cover.”

“Every book is vulnerable, and every book is nerve-wracking, but I've never been both so excited and terrified to have a book coming into the world. It's an expressly loaded subject, one on which you can't win.”

“I am a fifth-generation American, but from a young age, I went to yeshiva. I spent 12 hours a day with rabbis, and I think in Yiddish. To this day, I have to go back and unravel my writing and polish it so everyone doesn't sound like an old Jewish woman.”

“I was resistant to the Internet. I was afraid of it.”

“I wrote a novel, so now they can call me a novelist. I tell stories; that's it.”

“I don't think it's the writer's job to give answers or to give opinions. In fact, when a writer has answers, I think the work ends up being corrupted. It becomes didactic. What a book does is share a consciousness and invite people to explore the questions as best as you can.”

“When you see 'editor' on a book, there are many permutations of what that title can mean.”

“With each book, I've found myself more and more able to draw off the personal and still be as vulnerable as I need to be as a writer.”

“Your brain forms a story and, if you're lucky, there's a line where the story takes over the brain. You don't even know what you have.”

“When I was living in Jerusalem, I used to write in a coffee shop called Tmol Shilshom. I'd sit at the same table every day and work. And right next to my seat was a weathered wingback chair by a window.”

“There was a terrible fear for me when I started writing, which was that if you'd been denied unbelievably tumultuous experience, you didn't have permission to write.”

“I didn't sleep the night I finished 'Sister Hills.' It was so unsettling. I felt really wild. I didn't have a clue. It's a very loaded subject, and I did not know what I had. I was interested in watching how choices unfold over time. It's a story that's raising questions.”

“Human experience is infinite. Lives are infinite. Stories are infinite. Just because one story has gravity in it doesn't mean you can't write a different one with gravity in it.”

“My mother raised me very clearly that if you cross the street, you will die. If you go outside, you will die. If you play sports, you will likely die. That's what I was getting at home.”