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Etgar Keret

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Famous Etgar Keret Quotes

“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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Author:Etgar Keret
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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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“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 you were to do the world championship of victimhood in modern times, then the finals would probably be between Jews and Palestinians. I think the Jews win: we, Isralians, go from the Spanish Inquisition to pogroms to the fake Protocols of the Elders of Zion to World War II and the Holocaust - it's a horrible history. And if you look at the Palestinian world, victimized by every entity in the Middle East, they were massacred in every country. I think that, in Israel, the greatest fear that people have, and I have it, too, is this fear of genocide.”

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Author:Etgar Keret
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