194 Quotes by Etgar Keret

The story I had written wasn’t the creased, stit-smeared paper now sitting in the bottom of the trash can on the street. That page was just a pipeline through which I could transmit my feelings from my minds to his.

I think the typical way is that usually Holocaust survivors are known to be very quiet and full of anxiety, many of them don’t like life, don’t trust people. But my parents were children during the Holocaust. And my father was very optimistic.

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

Writing is a way of living other lives. It is a way of expanding your life. It’s not actually living a different life, it just means that you’re hungry for life. There are so many things you want to do.

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.

I’m not saying that I don’t experience people in life as evil, but writing is not a place of alienation; writing is the place where we can try to be human.

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

For my mother, having a family was the most important thing in her life. In the Second World War, it was a challenge – surviving physically and mentally and finding somebody who you loved and who was willing to be with you.

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.