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I write in a slangy colloquial speech that has not been common in the Israeli tradition of writing, and that is one of the things that gets lost a little in translation.

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
Gets
Common
Lost
Colloquial
Write
Translation
Littles
Translations
Little
Israeli
Writing
Tradition
Things
Speech

More quotes by 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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When I was a kid, I wanted to make my parents happy. I'd always say to them, What do you want me to do? Do sports? Be rich? Be funny? My mother would say, Whatever we want from you, you already gave us - we wanted you to be alive, and you made it.
Etgar Keret
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Etgar means challenge. And my family name is Keret, which means urban. So my name is urban challenge. My joke is, it's a good description of a birth but a strange name for a human being.
Etgar Keret
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I think there are some artists whose works are misanthropic.
Etgar Keret
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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.
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 write what needs to be written the way that seems genuinely right. If what comes out of it are stories, then it is my vocation to believe in them and in the fact that they'll interest people and maybe affect their lives.
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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It's kind of a reflex for me to ignore my own wishes and think about other people first.
Etgar Keret
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Making up characters and places and plots, unlike fixing your plumbing or doing dishes, is anything but practical or rational. I write what needs to be written the way that seems genuinely right.
Etgar Keret
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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.
Etgar Keret
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Hebrew was frozen, like frozen peas, fresh out of the Bible.
Etgar Keret
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Life keeps being a beautiful and frustrating experience.
Etgar Keret
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There were lots of lies along the way in life. Lies without arms, lies that were ill, lies that did harm, lies that could kill. Lies on foot, or behind the wheel, black-tie lies, and lies that could steal.
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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I was born at six months, and I weighed 900 grams [less than two pounds]. I have a very heroic birth story.
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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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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My first and biggest love was always fiction writing. But it is a very lonely pastime.
Etgar Keret
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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.
Etgar Keret