Quotes by Etgar Keret

Its amazing how people can sound like retards when theyre talking to their girlfriend, especially if they really love her a lot. Because when youre just fucking someone you make a point of keeping your cool, but when youre really in love - it can sound pretty repulsive.

Flights are expansive moments when the phone doesnt ring and the Internet doesnt work. The maxim that flying time is wasted time liberates me from my anxieties and guilt feelings, and it strips me of all ambitions, leaving room for a different sort of existence. A happy, idiotic existence, the kind that doesnt try to make the most of time but is satisfied with merely finding the most enjoyable way to spend it.

When youre having an asthma attack, you dont have any breath. When you dont have any breath, its hard to speak. Youre limited by the amount of air you can spend from your lungs. Thats not much, something between three to six words. It gives the word a meaning. Youre searching through the piles of words in your head, picking the most important ones. And they have a cost. Its not like the healthy people that take out every word that has accumulated in their head like garbage. When someone, while having an asthma attack, says I love you or I really love you, theres a difference. A word difference. And a word is a lot, because that word could have been sit, Ventolin or even ambulance.

He felt full of a dense and sour substance that was blocking his chest, and it wasnt 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.

Experience has taught me that there are some situations in which its better to keep quiet. That is, I tried to keep quiet. Life gives me good advice, but sometimes I refuse to take it.

Me, when it comes to religion, I have no God. When Im cool, I dont need anyone, and when Im feeling shitty and this big empty hole opens up inside me, I just know theres never been a god that could fill it and there never will be.

Dad said I had no respect for money and that if I didnt learn when I was little when was I going to learn? Kids who get Bart Simpson dolls at the drop of a hat turn into punks who steal from convenience stores, ‘cos they wind up thinking they can have whatever they want, just like that. So instead of a Bart doll he bought me an ugly porcelain pig with a slot in its back, and now Ill grow up to be okay, now I wont turn into a punk.

To what extent does anybody control his destiny? Life is very much like falling of the edge of a cliff. You have complete freedom to make all the choices you want to take on your way down. My characters choose to yearn and not lose hope even when the odds are completely against them. It doesnt make the landing at the end of that fall any less painful but, somehow, it helps them keep a little dignity their bone broken body.

When I ask him if he thinks theres a moral to his story, he says hes sure there must be, but doesnt know exactly what it is. Maybe, he says after a short pause, its that this world is full of lizards, and even though theres nothing we can do about it, it is always helpful to find out how big they are.

I usually start writing stories from tone and not from content—kind of like people who create music and invent the lyrics later on. 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. I think the equivalent of balance is tone, so I think tone gives birth to the story.

There should be an age limit for patients, he thinks as he takes off his shoes. You just have to say to them, You lived long enough. From now on, think of whats left as a bonus, a gift without an exchange slip. It hurts? Stay in bed. It still hurts? Wait: Either youll die or itll pass.