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Etgar Keret

Etgar Keret Books

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“...when I want to tell you a story of fiction, all those kind of college students, they think that they have this holding on me, that they say, we don't want to listen to what you are, we want to listen to a little bit of what you are that goes well with what we're not afraid of (not what we are, we don't know who we are).... But what's most important in our interaction is the word, that the word won't scare us. It can't hurt us in a story, for sure, but we want a word that doesn't scare us. And we are kind of breaking ourself to something that is less and less a persona and more and more kind of a repetitive loop of ever-going forgettable experiences.”

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Author:Etgar Keret
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“Here it comes, then: what we’re doing doesn’t really matter. You know how they always told us we’re indispensable? Not true. We’re dispensable. Highly dispensable. But since we’re here anyway, let’s make something of it. Let’s not get too caught up in identities and job titles. They’re usually only there to put some order in our day. Like summer camp, but with salaries instead of juice boxes. You’ll have to look elsewhere for the really essential stuff.”

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“Three a.m. is prime time for the soul. Programming should start any minute, and it's hard to tell what'll be on this time, so is it any wonder you're breaking into a sweat? Sometimes they broadcast anxiety, on weekends it's depression, and then there's the big hit--that feeling that makes your whole body tremble and your throat close up. It's not happiness. If it were happiness, you would know. You've read enough about happiness to know that it shouldn't be anywhere near this painful.”

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Book:Autocorrect: Stories
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“Now close your eyes and try to stop being angry. Try to stop raging at all those who deserve your righteous fury. Close your eyes and allow yourself, just for a moment, to simply feel the pain. To hesitate. To be confused. To feel sorrow. Remorse. You still have your whole life to spend persecuting, avenging, reckoning. But for now, just close your eyes and look inward, like a satellite hovering over a disaster zone, searching for signs of life. A lot has been taken away from you—but you’re still a human being. Wounded, bloodied, angry, hurting, frightened, drowning in sorrow, but still: human. Take a deep breath and try to remember the feeling. Because you know that a minute from now, when you open your eyes again, it’ll be gone.”

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“During the brief war with Iran, I found myself several times trapped in the neighborhood bomb shelter with people I barely knew. It was stressful. The missiles were frightening, but there was something straightforward and clear about them. People, on the other hand, are a lot more ambiguous and confusing, especially when they’re crammed into a small, closed space, listening to sirens and explosions on the other side of a concrete wall. But the explosive reality outside the shelter was soon forgotten, replaced by an unpleasant group dynamic that reminded me of a bad high school field trip: Who ends up sitting in the unsafe spot right opposite the door? When are we allowed to open it and leave? How do I get away from the sweaty neighbor who keeps checking his WhatsApp updates? And how the hell do you explain to the sad French Bulldog who’s in love with your left leg that you’re a happily married man? And yet all these worries, exasperating though they are, pale in comparison with the one really important question: When the missile attack finally ends and we open that steel door, what kind of world will be waiting for us out there?”

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“Living is the easiest thing in the world. Your mom pushes, a man in a white coat on the other side of the uterus pulls. Out you pop, and someone cuts your umbilical cord. You start crying. The lights are too bright. Air enters your lungs. Air exits your lungs. Air enters your lungs. Air exits. Air enters. Exits. It's a piece of cake. A walk in the park. You're alive. Living is the easiest thing in the world. Surviving ... that's another story. They attack you with pitchforks, they attack you with batons. They attack you with axes, with diseases, with cars. They come at you with tsunamis, with earthquakes, with a stroke. With a malignant tumor, a benign tumor, malignant tumor, benign tumor, malignant tumor. Let's see you get out of that alive.”

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Book:Autocorrect: Stories
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“And if you've somehow managed to survive this far, now is the time to step things up and try to start caring: about a cat wailing in the yard, a baby wailing on the neighbor's balcony, a homeless guy wailing on the sidewalk across the street. I know, it's not easy. Surviving is intuitive: a bear chases you, you run. But caring? That's for advanced players. Breaking up a fight between two strangers on the street. Giving the salami sandwich you packed for lunch to a hungry-looking guy with holes in his shirt. Remembering that salami is actually thick slices of a cow that didn't ask to die. Understanding that you're part of something bigger, part of a giant, bloodied human wound. That this disease called caring is incurable and always will be.”

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“And there is also that feeling of tightness in the chest, tears stuck in your throat unwilling to come out. It’s always there. It’s the default. All the stuff around you—that’s what keeps changing. Sometimes you’re about to miss a deadline, sometimes you drink your coffee with regular milk because they’re out of oat milk, sometimes your kid comes up to you out of nowhere and gives you a hug. And every single thing makes you want to cry, but nothing actually ends up turning into tears. Like an end to the war in Gaza: it’s always close, and it always doesn’t happen.”

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“If this airplane goes up in flames, we’ll all go up in flames. If it crashes, we’ll crash with it. And if it lands safely on the other side of the ocean, we’ll land right there with it, and we’ll all wait, along with everyone, for our baggage to come out on the carousel. A friend assured me that as soon as we land, this pressure in my chest will vanish. He’s the same friend who told me almost two years ago that the war would be over soon. He’s a good friend, but not the most on-point. I send my wife another selfie from the taxi to the hotel. I’m in the back seat. Eyes open wide at the camera. Completely dry. Nothing to worry about, honey, it’s all good.”

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“Years from now, I’ll be sitting in my wheelchair in the brightest spot in Amsterdam Park, next to the old wooden swings, catching a bit of sun. Next to me, on the new bench that some future mayor will have put there, will be my caregiver who came from a faraway country. She’ll know very little Hebrew, and at my old age, I’ll also remember only a few words—in Hebrew or at all. By then, my memory will have crumbled like an old biscuit left in a coat pocket since last winter, and every time my caregiver calls me “Papi,“ I’ll think she really is my daughter. Those moments in which the past is erased and replaced by an invented history will be my most meaningful ones. They will be what keeps me alive.”

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“They shot him like a dog, and me they slapped. That's how it always is--they shoot the men like dogs, and the women get slapped. "I don't have the heart to kill you even though you deserve it," their leader, who, oddly enough, was the shortest one. "We won't even rape you," he added, and from the look in his eyes, I could tell that he considered himself a prince, but instead of thanking him for his courtesy, I started to cry. It's tough being a woman, what with all those slaps and all the men you lose. When you're a man, they take you out of bed in the middle of the night once, drag you into the street, and bam, it's over. But when you're a woman, it never ends.”

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Book:The Girl on the Fridge
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“If I had to describe the interpersonal relationship between Donald Trump and me in a few words, I’d say we’re opposites that attract—or maybe similars that repel. Either way, it’s a very complicated relationship. Because however much we disagree ideologically and politically, when it comes to all the little choices and quirks that make up every person’s special sauce of life, far removed from partisan politics and religious affinities, POTUS and I turn out to be terrifyingly similar. Just like my orange doppelganger, I always launch into things with huge enthusiasm and verve, but very soon lose interest. And just like him, yours truly favors spontaneity and last-minute decisions, even with things other people prefer to plan ahead, like, say, war with Iran or where to have Passover dinner. And we both love this freedom so much that we’re willing to pay a heavy price for it, whether that means offending our brother-in-law or tolerating sky-high gas prices. But the greatest similarity between Trump and me might be that when our feelings are hurt and we reach the boiling point, we’re both capable of using harsh words that we later regret (or not). Another curious parallel: just like The Donald, I married a very beautiful woman who thinks I talk too much, and I, too, have a young son who is a head taller than me and barely glances in my direction.”

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Author:Etgar Keret
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“The only other Oshik she’d ever known was her dad’s uncle, an insurance broker from Netanya, and he was eaten by a shark. It was a big story back in the day, and there was an intimidating TV reporter at the shiva, who pounced on Dorit and her older sister, Rotem, demanding to interview them. Rotem told her that Oshik was an angel now, and that they would remember him forever. When the reporter asked Dorit what she would recall about Uncle Oshik in twenty years, Dorit stammered that the thing she would always remember was that a shark had eaten him.”

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Book:Autocorrect: Stories
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“But the whole idea of reading as a pastime has somehow dropped off my life menu, and the time I used to spend in fictional worlds is now spent incessantly refreshing the news. I sometimes still try to kid myself into believing that this pointless consuming of current affair is important for my understanding of reality and even for my survival. But deep inside, I know that the momentous piece of news—the one that will supposedly pull me and the entire Middle East out of the deep pit we’ve fallen into—will never come, and all my endless refreshing and scrolling is just another stage in outsourcing my emotional world. After all, it’s a lot easier to wait for updates from a dismaying reality than to listen, feel, and submit to someone else’s imagination and hopes.”

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“Flights are expansive moments when the phone doesn't ring and the Internet doesn't 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 doesn't try to make the most of time but is satisfied with merely finding the most enjoyable way to spend it.”

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Book:The Seven Good Years
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“There are moments in history when a technological invention bursts into the world and all of humanity watches with a mixture of appreciation and fear: appreciation of its huge potential, and fear of the equally huge danger that lurks within it. Atomic energy, artificial intelligence, and human cloning are just a few examples of promising inventions that can give humanity so much--but can also take everything away.”

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“...I have a strong gut feeling that God won’t be giving us peace any time soon; we’re going to have to make an effort to achieve it on our own. And if we succeed, neither we nor the Palestinians will receive it free of charge. Peace, by definition, is compromise between sides, and in that kind of compromise, each side has to pay a genuine, heavy price, not just in territories or money but also in a true change of worldview. That’s why the first step might be to stop using the debilitating word “peace,” which has long since taken on transcendental and messianic meanings in both the political left and right wings, and replace it immediately with the word “compromise.” It might be a less rousing word, but at least it reminds us that the solution we are so eager for can’t be found in our prayers to God but in our insistence on a grueling, not always perfect dialogue with the other side. True, it’s more difficult to write songs about compromise, especially the kind my son and other kids can sing in their angelic voices. And it doesn’t have the same cool look on T-shirts. But in contrast to the lovely word that demands nothing of the person saying it, the word “compromise” insists on the same preconditions from all those who use it: They must first agree to concessions, maybe even more — they must be willing to accept the assumption that beyond the just and absolute truth they believe in, another truth may exist. And in the racist and violent part of the world I live in, that’s nothing to scoff at.”

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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.”

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“I've always had a very developed superego. I also had a very powerful id, but there was no ego in the middle. So writing was always like letters sent from the id to the superego, saying, "What's going on here?" What I loved about writing was that I was totally weightless. I was amazed at the fact that I could be myself without being afraid that anyone would get hurt.”

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