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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.

Etgar Keret

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Etgar Keret
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: August 20
Actor
Film Director
Pedagogue
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Keret
Etgar
Half
Sentence
Coaster
Like
Hips
Coasters
Sentences
Roller
King
Lyric
Effect
Hebrew
Bible
Hops
Kings
James
Effects
Spoken

More quotes by Etgar Keret

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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.
Etgar Keret
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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.
Etgar Keret
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What connects me so strongly to Israel is the fact that I'm second generation.
Etgar Keret
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When I started writing my stories, I thought that not only nobody outside my language, but nobody outside my neighbourhood would get them.
Etgar Keret
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I often give this metaphor where I say that writing short fiction is like surfing, while writing a novel is like navigating with your car. So when you navigate with your car, you want to get somewhere. When you surf, you don't want to get somewhere, you just don't want to fall off your board.
Etgar Keret
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My first and biggest love was always fiction writing. But it is a very lonely pastime.
Etgar Keret
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I think that becoming a parent kind of made me try to be more responsible. And it made me much more stressful.
Etgar Keret
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What happens when you speak colloquial Hebrew is you switch between registers all the time. So in a typical sentence, three words are biblical, one word is Russian, and one word is Yiddish. This kind of connection between very high language and very low language is very natural, people use it all the time.
Etgar Keret
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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.
Etgar Keret
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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.
Etgar Keret
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If we're a family and your brother wishes you death, it's not a very happy family.
Etgar Keret
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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.
Etgar Keret
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You don't need to use the language of God to ask where the restrooms are.
Etgar Keret
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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.
Etgar Keret
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When my books were translated, it was always about the characters, because the unique language aspect was lost in translation.
Etgar Keret
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I never know the endings when I write. It's a turnoff when you know the ending. You lose much of your incentive to write when you already know. It's like seeing a movie a second time.
Etgar Keret
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As a monogamous creature, I feel sometimes that it fills up a function that affairs have in married people's life.
Etgar Keret
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If someone gives you a piece of advice that sounds right and feels right, use it. If someone gives you a piece of advice that sounds right and feels wrong, don’t waste so much as a single second on it. It may be fine for someone else, but not for you.
Etgar Keret
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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?
Etgar Keret
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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.
Etgar Keret