“I wish I understood why you buy all this stuff.” — Etgar Keret Quote

I wish I understood why you buy all this stuff.

What you experience in the army, aged 18 to 21, is what you take through all your life. You cross invisible lines: you shoot someone, get shot, break into people's houses. It's naive to think you won't carry anything into your life.

In the army you feel violated - there's no private space. Writing was a life-saver, a way of recovering private territory.

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.

I think sometimes you forget I'm human.

My point is: maybe you can afford to wait. Maybe for you there's a tomorrow. Maybe for you there's one thousand tomorrows, or three thousand, or ten, so much time you can bathe in it, roll around it, let it slide like coins through your fingers. So much time you can waste it.

When something's let go of, it circles; and though we are rarely the center of the circle, it draws around us its unbroken, marvelous curve.

A good leg will fall. A straight back will stoop. A black beard will turn white. A curled pate will grow bald." He held out a small triangle of fruit toward Emilia. "But a good heart, my dear... well, a good heart is the sun and the moon.