Etgar Keret Quotes

Translators are like ninjas. If you notice them, they’re no good.

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.

According to Gur's theory of boredom, everything that happens in the world today is because of boredom: love, war, inventions, fake fireplaces - ninety-five percent of all that is pure boredom.

It's kind of a reflex for me to ignore my own wishes and think about other people first.

If you want to learn how to be happy, you have to know what is sadness first.

Rabbits are played. Nowadays it's all about the turtles. Tell them it's a ninja, they'll freak.

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.

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?

For three months, a person sits and looks at you, imagining a kiss.

The one who swallows cactuses with spines should not complain about hemorrhoids.

Maybe in the general scheme of things he couldn't find any meaning in life, but on a smaller scale it was okay. Not always, but a lot of the time.

I think there are some artists whose works are misanthropic.

My stories are very compact. I want them to say the most complex things in the simplest way.

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.

As the son of Holocaust survivors, this is life - you're put in a corner, and you have to get out. I believe that you can always get out.

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.

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.

If you scare somebody enough, they stop being rational.

Before I started to make films, I didn't give much thought to the way the characters were physically positioned in the story world.

You'll never know what's happening inside the heads of other people.

As a monogamous creature, I feel sometimes that it fills up a function that affairs have in married people's life.

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.

I was born at six months, and I weighed 900 grams [less than two pounds]. I have a very heroic birth story.

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.

I like smoking pot, but I'm not the kind of guy who smokes every day.

Life is one heck of an invention. It is better than the iPhone 4S and Coke Zero combined.

I remember a point in [writing] the story where I said, "This isn't working, I should go and buy something at the supermarket or my wife will kill me." Then I said, "No, I'll go on."

I think living in Israel and wanting to change reality is the best prescription for never-ending writer's block.

I never know the endings when I write. It's a turnoff when you know the ending. You lose much of your incentive to write when you already know. It's like seeing a movie a second time.

I think tone gives birth to the story.

Often in writing programs, articulation and clarity are more important than what you actually say.

As a child, I never wanted my parents to be unhappy, which meant that I would always contemplate what would make them happy.

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.

People usually don't allow you to cut off their tongue.

I usually start writing stories from tone and not from content - kind of like people who create music and invent the lyrics later on.

You don't need to use the language of God to ask where the restrooms are.

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.

When you work on a graphic novel or a film with people you've been together through a lot and you've exposed your secrets and weaker sides to each other.

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.

When I started writing my stories, I thought that not only nobody outside my language, but nobody outside my neighbourhood would get them.

When I say a spoken Hebrew sentence, half of it is like the King James Bible and half of it is a hip-hop lyric. It has a roller-coaster effect.

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

In Israel, the role of the writer is dictated by the language in which you write. Writers see themselves as cultural prophets.

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

The reason I write is that I'm not in dialogue with my emotions; writing puts me in touch with myself.

I think that, in Hebrew, it's like the language creates a more unique and specific universe even before the story.

My first and biggest love was always fiction writing. But it is a very lonely pastime.

I think that before my son was born, I didn't have a strong sensation for future. I was living in this kind of never-ending present.

Often, the stories are very much like trust falls. You fall, and you hope the story's going to catch you.

Life keeps being a beautiful and frustrating experience.