Etgar Keret
Etgar Keret
Etgar Keretis an Israeli writer known for his short stories, graphic novels, and scriptwriting for film and television...
NationalityIsraeli
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth20 August 1967
CountryIsrael
fall writing giving
I often give this metaphor where I say that writing short fiction is like surfing, while writing a novel is like navigating with your car. So when you navigate with your car, you want to get somewhere. When you surf, you don't want to get somewhere, you just don't want to fall off your board.
thinking giving tone
I think tone gives birth to the story.
scare enough rational
If you scare somebody enough, they stop being rational.
thinking israel greatest-fear
I think that, in Israel, the greatest fear that people have, and I have it, too, is fear of genocide.
writing fiction moments
Writing is very castrating in the moment. Fiction in general, it has no function, nobody asks for it.
book eggs important
You take a book, and what can you do with a book? Can you cook an egg on a book? No. Can you dig a hole? No. Is it a good weapon? No. The fact that it's good for nothing kind of makes it almost all-important.
guy smoking kind
I like smoking pot, but I'm not the kind of guy who smokes every day.
block thinking expression
I don't like the expression "writer's block" because I think it presupposes that you have a problem with your plumbing. I really think it's the other way around.
writing thinking should
I think when you write, you should call it a "writing spree." I don't write every day, and I don't write regularly.
reading cells talking
Most of them were murderers. But when I went there to talk, they were the nicest people. I did a reading. I said, "Thank you," and then they said to me, "Could you talk some more?" And I said, "Why?" and they answered, "Most of us are in solitary confinement, so the moment you finish talking, they take us back to our cells. We like hanging out here together."
thinking stories smarter
It's funny, but I think my stories - the good ones - they're much smarter than I am.
stories embarrassing discouraging
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.
wall block grief
He felt full of a dense and sour substance that was blocking his chest, and it wasn't grief. After all those years, life now seemed like no more than a trap, a maze, not even a maze, just a room that was all walls, no door.
biblical people connections
What happens when you speak colloquial Hebrew is you switch between registers all the time. So in a typical sentence, three words are biblical, one word is Russian, and one word is Yiddish. This kind of connection between very high language and very low language is very natural, people use it all the time.