194 Quotes by Etgar Keret

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

Sometimes, when you are in a really constrained situation, it makes you more focused about what you want to say and where you’re heading. The most beautiful love poems that were ever written are sonnets, composed in a very constraining form.

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.

The writer is neither saint nor tzaddik nor prophet standing at the gate; he’s just another sinner who has a somewhat sharper awareness and uses slightly more precise language to describe the inconceivable reality of our world.

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

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

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.

Most of the Jewish writer friends I have are American, and I feel closer to them because they’re always obsessed with one issue – identity: what does it mean to be an American Jew?

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