Etgar Keret quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Etgar Keret

Etgar Keret Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Etgar Keret on Wise Famous Quotes.

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

Apparently, I'm very, very popular in jails. They often ask me to come and speak.

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.

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

Life keeps being a beautiful and frustrating experience.

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

In the last war, people became vocal from the right-wing point of view: if you're liberal, then you're a traitor.

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

What connects me so strongly to Israel is the fact that I'm second generation.

The best stories you usually hear are stories that people feel some type of urgency about.

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

He tells them that there is a line that separates killing bugs from killing frogs, and that no matter how hard it is, that line must never be crossed

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

My wife says I'd get philosophical with a lamp post if I thought the thing had ears.

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

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

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

I think that, in Israel, the greatest fear that people have, and I have it, too, is fear of genocide.

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

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.

Don't you go and dump reality on us like a garbage truck.

The amazing thing about an artistic collaboration is that it is as intense and intimate as a romantic one. Sometimes even more so.

You can remember without seeing it.

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

I think there are some artists whose works are misanthropic.

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

Hebrew was frozen, like frozen peas, fresh out of the Bible.

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

It's funny, but I think my stories - the good ones - they're much smarter than I am.

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.

A word is a lot.

If you scare somebody enough, they stop being rational.

If we're a family and your brother wishes you death, it's not a very happy family.

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

Hebrew is this unique thing that you cannot translate to any other language. It has to do with its history.

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 don't need art to tell me people are assholes. I can just go into the streets.

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

An awfully beautiful story, but it isn't mine.

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

I think when you write, you should call it a "writing spree." I don't write every day, and I don't write regularly.

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

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

Thirty miles is a long way, even by car, and on foot it's a thousand times more, especially for a dog, whose step is like a quarter of a human's.

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

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

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

Writing is very castrating in the moment. Fiction in general, it has no function, nobody asks for it.

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.

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.

For Himme, the cumulative effect of the cumulative listening to the cumulative song was cumulatively distressing.

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

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

When my books were translated, it was always about the characters, because the unique language aspect was lost in translation.

Sometimes the stories are smarter than me, and suddenly these things start to make sense.

I really believe hatred is not a primal emotion, in that you can't find it in nature. It's basically some kind of distortion of fear.

This idea where, in this safe haven for Jews, Jews will threaten to kill other Jews, it wasn't in the brochure.

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

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