I'm not saying that I don't experience people in life as evil, but writing is not a place of alienation; writing is the place where we can try to be human. I think there are some artists whose works are misanthropic. When I see this kind of stuff, I think, they're smart, but I don't need art to tell me people are assholes. I can just go into the streets.
Etgar KeretIn America, where writers are preoccupied with the craft of writing, I always try to introduce this concept of the badly written good story. Turning the hierarchy around and putting passion on top and not craft, because when you just focus on craft, you can write something that is very sterile.
Etgar KeretAnd she loved a man who was made out of nothing. A few hours without him and right away sheโd be missing him with her whole body, sitting in her office surrounded by polyethylene and concrete and thinking of him. And every time sheโd boil water for coffee in her ground-floor office, sheโd let the steam cover her face, imagining it was him stroking her cheeks, her eyelids and sheโd 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 KeretAll my writing-life people kept telling me that I should stop writing short stories and start writing novels: my agent, my Israeli publisher, my foreign ones, my bank manager - they all felt and keep feeling that I'm doing something wrong here.
Etgar Keret