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
strong son thinking
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.
schemes scales okay
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.
strong wish east
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.
suicide good-life taken
I have always thought that Heaven is a place for people who had had a good life, but that is not true. God is merciful and way too good to make it so. The Heaven is just a place for people who could not be really happy while living on Earth. I was once told that people who commit suicide are taken back on Earth to repeat life from the very beginning because if they did not like it once, it did not mean they would not like it the next time. But those who did not fit in on Earth at all, ended up here. Everyone comes to Heaven in their own way.
kings hip-hop half
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.
independent character return
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.
fun grateful writing
I tried once in my life to write a novel. I had written something like 80 pages of it when my laptop got stolen. When I told people this, they acted as if something tragic had happened, but I kind of felt relieved, grateful to the thief who saved me from another year of something that felt more like homework than fun.
dog israel people
In Israel, there is this reduction of the political discourse to something that is very limited. It's as if you have that pitch that only dogs can hear. Sometimes I feel I speak at such a pitch that very few people around me communicate with what I'm saying.
reading writing fighting
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.
safe-haven ideas brochures
This idea where, in this safe haven for Jews, Jews will threaten to kill other Jews, it wasn't in the brochure.
brother wish happy-family
If we're a family and your brother wishes you death, it's not a very happy family.
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.
wall sleep two
There are two kinds of people, those who like to sleep next to the wall, and those who like to sleep next to the people who push them off the bed.
brother war son
During the war, there were people wishing me death, wishing my son death, wishing my wife death in very graphic ways. In the past, I would go overseas and I would say, "Israel is like my family: we disagree, but we're all brothers." I can't say that anymore, because life proves me wrong.