Writers Write Is All About Writing
Writers Write Is All About Writing
Etgar Keret

Literary Birthday – 20 August – Etgar Keret

Happy Birthday, Etgar Keret‎, born on 20 August 1967.

Etgar Keret Quotes

  1. I don’t think in terms of ideas. I have some sort of starting point. And I never know where the story is heading.
  2. Writing a story is kind of like surfing, as opposed to the novel, where you use a GPS to get somewhere. With surfing, you kind of jump.
  3. My stories are very compact. I want them to say the most complex things in the simplest way.
  4. I see creative-writing classes as some sort of AA meeting. It is more of a support group for people who write than an actual course in which you learn writing skills. This support group is extremely important because there is something very lonely about writing.
  5. Translators are like ninjas. If you notice them, they’re no good.
  6. I always have a story in my head that needs to be written, or at least I think I do. But I usually can’t find the time to write it. There is some sort of a natural selection process in which the stories that are able to stay there for long enough and to keep nagging are the ones that get written, which is, I feel, a very fair system.
  7. You’ll never know what’s happening inside the heads of other people.

Etgar Keret is an Israeli writer. He is known for his short stories, graphic novels, and scripts for film and television. His writing has been published in The New Yorker, Zoetrope, and the Paris Review. His books have been published in 42 languages in 45 countries. The Seven Good Years: A Memoir was published in 2015. Over 100 short films and several feature films have been based on his stories. Keret teaches creative writing at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Since 2021, he has written the weekly newsletter Alphabet Soup on Substack. Visit etgarkeret.com and follow him on Instagram.

Image source: Stephan Röhl, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Etgar_Keret_-_2016_-_2.jpg

Amanda Patterson
by Amanda Patterson
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Posted on: 20th August 2015
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