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" For a book to function... it has to be a functioning reality. The character has to be real, and I imagine that's exactly what happens for a spy who is in deep cover. "

Nathan Englander

Character

Book

Real

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" Your brain forms a story and, if you're lucky, there's a line where the story takes over the brain. You don't even know what you have. "

" With each book, I've found myself more and more able to draw off the personal and still be as vulnerable as I need to be as a writer. "

" Philip Roth has been a huge influence on me. The early books I read in my teens and twenties. "

Nathan Englander

Early

Influence

" I was resistant to the Internet. I was afraid of it. "

" There's an Armed Forces Haggadah and an Alcoholics Anonymous Haggadah and an LGBT Haggadah. Some people make a new Haggadah every year. It's a real living document... They're just constantly made throughout time. "

" When you're in a world, and your parents are one way, and you're told, 'This is how the whole world is, and this is how you're supposed to be,' and you're terribly unhappy in that world, it's a very scary thing. "

" When I was living in Jerusalem, I used to write in a coffee shop called Tmol Shilshom. I'd sit at the same table every day and work. And right next to my seat was a weathered wingback chair by a window. "

" I'd say that in place of a singular phobic-level terror, I keep a whole collection of running, yet manageable, fears. "

" I don't think it's the writer's job to give answers or to give opinions. In fact, when a writer has answers, I think the work ends up being corrupted. It becomes didactic. What a book does is share a consciousness and invite people to explore the questions as best as you can. "

" I'm kind of in love with my theater agent. I'm a true naive about the theater, a total innocent. "

" The reason people get afraid of writing real, honest journalism and fiction, and the reason corrupted people and demagogues are afraid of journalism and fiction and poetry across the world, is because it is a subversive form. "

" So many people discuss, you know, Israel/Palestine as if it's people on a spectrum. "

" Yes, there is a way I was taught to think that's very suited to writing. And, of course, I'm thankful to have grown up in a world filled with stories. "

" I understand if everyone looking at me is seeing a Jew and seeing me as a kind of 'other.' But I can't be expected to see myself that way. That is, to me, Jewish is the normal way to be; it's not a type of being. "

Nathan Englander

Seeing

Looking

" I spent my whole childhood being told, 'Israel is surrounded by enemies who are trying to push it into the sea.' But can't Gaza feel the same way? Personally, I'm frozen in time. "

" Twitter is the best art for writers. I find it enticing. "

" It's so easy to call something a Jewish story or a gay story or a woman's story. Aesthetically, if a story is not universal, it has failed. Your obligation is to the story. One rule creatively, and emotionally, is its universality. "

" I moved to New York because I thrive there. "

" I'm just very interested, fascinated, heartbroken, obsessed with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and our need to find peace on that front... Everyone's always, like, victim and avenger at the same time. "

" What I'm trying to say is that a lot that lies behind being able to live the writing life is psychological and wrapped up in ideas of self-definition. "

" You spend so much time as a writer telling straight and linear stories. "

" Empathy is what obsesses me. And watching empathy recede in the world is terrifying. "

" I feel very lucky that I have this career that allows me to say, 'I'm ready to start now on this project,' and I can go and do it. "

" There's no safety in anything, but in the arts, there is really this idea of no promises. I didn't follow the writing dream for safety. "

Nathan Englander

Safety

Dream

" When I wrote my novel, 'The Ministry of Special Cases,' I couldn't even brush my teeth. I had to write in isolation from everything else. I thought a play would take away from my fiction, but the more projects I work on, the more time I have. "

" So writing stories is not easier in comparison to the playwriting or translation; the stories are easier in league with them. "

" I'm very interested in how people change. "

" There's no such thing as being a cultural Jew. You're religious or you're not. "

" I lived in Jerusalem with the Temple Mount as my holy site. My Palestinian neighbors lived in Al-Quds with the Haram al-Sharif. "