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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

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I Have Always Thought

Etgar Keret

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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.

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During The War, There Were People Wishing Me Death, Wishing My Son Death, Wishing My Wife Death In Very Graphic Ways. In The Past, I Would Go Overseas And I Would Say, "israel Is Like My Family: We Disagree, But We're All Brothers." I Can't Say That Anymore, Because Life Proves Me Wrong.

In The Army You Feel Violated - There's No Private Space. Writing Was A Life-saver, A Way Of Recovering Private Territory.

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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.

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When I Say A Spoken Hebrew Sentence, Half Of It Is Like The King James Bible And Half Of It Is A Hip-hop Lyric. It Has A Roller-coaster Effect.

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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.

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I Like Smoking Pot, But I'm Not The Kind Of Guy Who Smokes Every Day.

Hebrew Was Frozen, Like Frozen Peas, Fresh Out Of The Bible.

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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.

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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.

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.

I Often Give This Metaphor Where I Say That Writing Short Fiction Is Like Surfing, While Writing A Novel Is Like Navigating With Your Car. So When You Navigate With Your Car, You Want To Get Somewhere. When You Surf, You Don't Want To Get Somewhere, You Just Don't Want To Fall Off Your Board.

What Happens When You Speak Colloquial Hebrew Is You Switch Between Registers All The Time. So In A Typical Sentence, Three Words Are Biblical, One Word Is Russian, And One Word Is Yiddish. This Kind Of Connection Between Very High Language And Very Low Language Is Very Natural, People Use It 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. When I Started Writing, I Thought [the Language] Was Telling The Story Of This Country: Old People In A Young Nation, Very Religious, Very Conservative, Very Tight-assed, But Also Very Anarchistic, Very Open-minded. It's All In The Language, And That's One Thing That Doesn't Translate.

I Rarely Return To Characters. My Characters, At Least Most Of Them, Are Much More A Part Of That Superorganism That Is The Story Than Separate And Independent Creatures.

I Don't Like The Expression "writer's Block" Because I Think It Presupposes That You Have A Problem With Your Plumbing. I Really Think It's The Other Way Around.

The Moment That You Have A Child - That You Know That When He'll Turn 18, He'll Join The Army And Go There For Three Years Of Compulsory Service - Then You Can't Help Yourself Of Thinking About The Future - Speculating About It, Dreading It Or Even Being - Trying To Be More Active To Change It And Improve It.

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If You Want To Learn How To Be Happy, You Have To Know What Is Sadness First.

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