Etgar Keret quotes

Etgar Keret is an Israeli writer known for his short stories, screenplays, and graphic novels. His work is characterized by surreal humor, poignancy, and unique perspectives on modern life. He has received numerous awards and is regarded as one of the most prominent voices in contemporary Israeli literature. Here are 64 of his quotes:

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

Etgar Keret

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

Etgar Keret

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

Etgar Keret

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

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

Etgar Keret

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

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

Etgar Keret

According to Gur's theory of boredom, everything that happens in the world today is because of boredom: love, war, inventions, fake fireplaces - ninety-five percent of all that is pure boredom.

Etgar Keret

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.

Etgar Keret

Being ambivalent doesn't mean that you're a relevatist, that anything goes; it just means that you show the complexity of life. Life is always complex.

Etgar Keret

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

Etgar Keret

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

I used to feel that if I say something's wrong, I have to say how it could be made right. But what I learned from Kurt Vonnegut was that I could write stories that say I may not have a solution, but this is wrong - that's good enough.

Etgar Keret

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

He felt full of a dense and sour substance that was blocking his chest, and it wasn't grief. After all those years, life now seemed like no more than a trap, a maze, not even a maze, just a room that was all walls, no door.

Etgar Keret

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

Etgar Keret

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

Etgar Keret

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

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.

Etgar Keret

My father - I once asked him what was his greatest achievement. He said his greatest achievement was that he fought in five wars in the infantry, always on the front line, and never hurt anybody.

Etgar Keret

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

Etgar Keret

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

Etgar Keret