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
writing army space
In the army you feel violated - there's no private space. Writing was a life-saver, a way of recovering private territory.
army thinking people
What you experience in the army, aged 18 to 21, is what you take through all your life. You cross invisible lines: you shoot someone, get shot, break into people's houses. It's naive to think you won't carry anything into your life.
writing army training
I was first introduced to Kafka's writing during my compulsory army-service basic training. During that period, Kafka's fiction felt hyperrealistic.
children army thinking
The moment that you have a child - that you know that when he'll turn 18, he'll join the Army and go there for three years of compulsory service - then you can't help yourself of thinking about the future - speculating about it, dreading it or even being - trying to be more active to change it and improve it.
strong writing army
Generally, all my life, I have had strong friction with life - I was a problematic soldier, I was kicked out of the army, I was in fights. There was something about writing that was a way of experimenting with this emotion.
liberating
When I write a story, I have no idea what I'm doing. All I know is that I want to share something with my readers. The whole idea of writing is this place where you lose control, where you're irresponsible - it's a very liberating place.
thinking civilization games
I think that any authentic feeling one has of life should be a feeling of defeat. It's a losing game. You're going to die. Civilization is going to end. Our society is in decline, and we should feel OK about it because Roman society was in decline and before it the Assyrian one was, and they disappeared off this earth and we will disappear too.
hurt powerful writing
I've always had a very developed superego. I also had a very powerful id, but there was no ego in the middle. So writing was always like letters sent from the id to the superego, saying, "What's going on here?" What I loved about writing was that I was totally weightless. I was amazed at the fact that I could be myself without being afraid that anyone would get hurt.
stories sometimes make-sense
Sometimes the stories are smarter than me, and suddenly these things start to make sense.
writing passion america
In America, where writers are preoccupied with the craft of writing, I always try to introduce this concept of the badly written good story. Turning the hierarchy around and putting passion on top and not craft, because when you just focus on craft, you can write something that is very sterile.
frozen hebrew peas
Hebrew was frozen, like frozen peas, fresh out of the Bible.
writing important clarity
Often in writing programs, articulation and clarity are more important than what you actually say.
people stories type
The best stories you usually hear are stories that people feel some type of urgency about.
writing law space
Nobody else in the world would look at writing as craftsmanship - it's totally this Protestant hardworking ethic. You go into this kind of infinite space of imagination and you fence yourself in with all kinds of laws.