Etgar means "challenge." And my family name is Keret, which means "urban." So my name is "urban challenge." My joke is, it's a good description of a birth but a strange name for a human being.

I have to admit that talking authoritatively about my students' stories can make me feel, at times, like an astronaut who has just landed on a new planet and insists on giving guided tours to its inhabitants.

I like smoking pot, but I'm not the kind of guy who smokes every day.

As a monogamous creature, I feel sometimes that it fills up a function that affairs have in married people's life.

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.

When my works are being translated, I always get this question from my translators: Up or down? Which means, should it sound biblical and highbrow, or should we take it all down to sound colloquial? In Hebrew, it's both all the time. People in Israel would write in a high register, they wouldn't write colloquial speech. I do a special take on colloquial speech.

Hebrew is this unique thing that you cannot translate to any other language. It has to do with its history.