Etgar Keret > Quotes

“It's amazing how people can sound like retards when they're talking to their girlfriend, especially if they really love her a lot. Because when you're just fucking someone you make a point of keeping your cool, but when you're really in love - it can sound pretty repulsive.”
― Etgar Keret, The Nimrod Flipout

“Translators are like ninjas. If you notice them, they’re no good.”
― 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 Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God and Other Stories

“For three months,
a person sits and looks at you,
imagining a kiss.”
― Etgar Keret

“When you're having an asthma attack, you don't have any breath. When you don't have any breath, it's hard to speak. You're limited by the amount of air you can spend from your lungs. That's not much, something between three to six words. It gives the word a meaning. You're searching through the piles of words in your head, picking the most important ones. And they have a cost. It's 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", there's a difference. A word difference. And a word is a lot, because that word could have been "sit", "Ventolin" or even "ambulance".”
― Etgar Keret, צנורות

“A word is a lot.”
― 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, The Nimrod Flipout

“If you want to learn how to be happy, you have to know what is sadness first.”
― Etgar Keret, Missing Kissinger

“He misses the feeling of creating something out of something. That’s right — something out of something. Because something out of nothing is when you make something up out of thin air, in which case it has no value. Anybody can do that. But something out of something means it was really there the whole time, inside you, and you discover it as part of something new, that’s never happened before.”
― Etgar Keret, פתאום דפיקה בדלת

“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, Gaza Blues: Different Stories

“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, The Girl on the Fridge

“And she loved a man who was made out of nothing. A few hours without him and right away she’d be missing him with her whole body, sitting in her office surrounded by polyethylene and concrete and thinking of him. And every time she’d boil water for coffee in her ground-floor office, she’d let the steam cover her face, imagining it was him stroking her cheeks, her eyelids and she’d wait for the day to be over, so she could go to her apartment building, climb the flight of stairs, turn the key in the door, and find him waiting for her, naked and still between the sheets of her empty bed.”
― Etgar Keret, The Girl on the Fridge

“You'll never know what's happening inside the heads of other people.”
― Etgar Keret, The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God and Other Stories

“I think she cried at my funeral. It's not that I'm conceited or anything, but I'm pretty sure. Sometimes I can actually picture her talking about me to some guy she feels close to. Talking about me dying. About how they lowered me into the grave, kind of shrivelled up and pitiful, like an old chocolate bar. About how we never really got a chance. And afterwards the guy fucks her, a fuck that's all about making her feel better.”
― Etgar Keret, The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God

“I have always thought that Heaven is a place for people who had had a good life, but that is not true. God is merciful and way too good to make it so. The Heaven is just a place for people who could not be really happy while living on Earth. I was once told that people who commit suicide are taken back on Earth to repeat life from the very beginning because if they did not like it once, it did not mean they would not like it the next time. But those who did not fit in on Earth at all, ended up here. Everyone comes to Heaven in their own way.”
― Etgar Keret, The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God and Other Stories

“His whole body was completely still, except the wings, which were still fluttering a little, like when someone dies. That's when he finally understood that of all the things the angel had told him, nothing was true. That he wasn't even an angel, just a liar with wings.”
― Etgar Keret

“Rabbits are played. Nowadays it's all about the turtles. Tell them it's a ninja, they'll freak.”
― Etgar Keret

“- Не бой се, миличка. Ние сме от хората, които оцеляват при всякакви положения. Какво ли не ни е идвало до главата: болести, войни, атентати... Ако ни чака мир, ще преживеем и него!”
― Etgar Keret, The Seven Good Years

“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 doesn't 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.”
― Etgar Keret

“The fact is that everything I have in my pockets is carefully chosen so I’ll always be prepared. Everything is there so I can be at an advantage at the moment of truth. Actually, that’s not accurate. Everything’s there so I won’t be at a disadvantage at the moment of truth.”
― Etgar Keret, פתאום דפיקה בדלת

“You can remember without seeing it.”
― Etgar Keret, Missing Kissinger

“To vanquish the emptiness, I have strategems. I listen to music for countless hours. The music fills not only me, but the space around me. Music, as I have learned, is an elixir that seeps into all your limbs.”
― Etgar Keret

“Even as a very young man, I knew that my family is like a plant. Uproot it, and it will wilt. Pluck away at it, and it will die. But leave it to thrive in the soil, untouched, and it will weather both gods and winds. It is born with the soil, and it will live so long as the soil shall live.”
― Etgar Keret

“Why does a father have to protect his son?” I thought for a moment before answering. “Look,” I said as I stroked his cheek, “the world we live in can sometimes be very tough. And it’s only fair that everyone who’s born into it should have at least one person who’ll be there to protect him.”
― Etgar Keret, The Seven Good Years

“A typical thought by way of example: at night, when we say we’re going to sleep, and we get into bed and shut our eyes, we’re not really asleep. We’re just pretending. We shut our eyes and breathe rhythmically, pretending to be asleep, until the deceit grows slowly real. And maybe that’s how it is with death.”
― Etgar Keret, The Nimrod Flipout

“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, פתאום דפיקה בדלת

“...but I felt then the same way Nicky did, that I was getting myself more life. Not necessarily a better life, not a life more promising than the one I already had. But because I thought this life was in addition to and not instead of, I devoured it without a second's hesitation.”
― Etgar Keret, The Nimrod Flipout

“Доплака му се, но в очите му нямаше сълзи. Какъв е смисълът, да си идеално вакуумиран, ако си целият мокър отвътре?”
― Etgar Keret, The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God and Other Stories

“The one who swallows cactuses with spines should not complain about hemorrhoids.”
― Etgar Keret, Missing Kissinger

“He tells them that there is a line that separates killing bugs from killing frogs, and that no matter how hard it is, that line must never be crossed”
― Etgar Keret, The Seven Good Years