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" I know nobody believes in peace anymore, but what else is there to work toward? As the years have gone by, peace seems like more and more of an impossibility. "
Nathan Englander
Work
Gone
Know
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" I am a fifth-generation American, but from a young age, I went to yeshiva. I spent 12 hours a day with rabbis, and I think in Yiddish. To this day, I have to go back and unravel my writing and polish it so everyone doesn't sound like an old Jewish woman. "
Nathan Englander
Age
Writing
Woman
" When you see 'editor' on a book, there are many permutations of what that title can mean. "
Nathan Englander
Title
Editor
Book
" Whatever part of writing that is subconscious is a thing that no one has access to. "
Nathan Englander
Subconscious
Whatever
Access
" 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. "
Nathan Englander
Coffee
Day
Work
" 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. "
Nathan Englander
Way
Thankful
Think
" 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. "
Nathan Englander
Job
Best
Work
" I was resistant to the Internet. I was afraid of it. "
Nathan Englander
Afraid
Resistant
Internet
" I didn't sleep the night I finished 'Sister Hills.' It was so unsettling. I felt really wild. I didn't have a clue. It's a very loaded subject, and I did not know what I had. I was interested in watching how choices unfold over time. It's a story that's raising questions. "
Nathan Englander
Night
Sister
Choices
" So writing stories is not easier in comparison to the playwriting or translation; the stories are easier in league with them. "
Nathan Englander
Writing
Easier
Comparison
" My mother raised me very clearly that if you cross the street, you will die. If you go outside, you will die. If you play sports, you will likely die. That's what I was getting at home. "
Nathan Englander
Sports
You
Die
" 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. "
Nathan Englander
Easy
Universal
Woman
" I'm kind of in love with my theater agent. I'm a true naive about the theater, a total innocent. "
Nathan Englander
Kind
True
Innocent
" Empathy is what obsesses me. And watching empathy recede in the world is terrifying. "
Nathan Englander
World
Watching
Terrifying
" 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. "
Nathan Englander
Life
Trying
Ideas
" Every nation should wrestle with the question of what it means to defend itself, what it means to take revenge. "
Nathan Englander
Revenge
Take
Defend
" 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. "
Nathan Englander
People
Time
Some People
" I hardly grew up mono-lingually! I was raised religious, so there's a tradition of semi-access to a second language. When I learned my ABCs, they taught us our Aleph-Bet at the same time. "
Nathan Englander
Tradition
Up
Same
" I'm very interested in how people change. "
Nathan Englander
Very
People Change
People
" I always call myself either an optimistic pessimist or a pessimistic optimist - I'm not sure which way it goes. "
Nathan Englander
Optimist
Myself
Pessimist
" 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
Follow
" 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. "
Nathan Englander
You
Way
World
" 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
Me
" Sometimes I feel like those born-again folk, always working on their faith, but I'm always working on my atheism. We all have our struggles. "
Nathan Englander
Feel
Faith
Like
" 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
" 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. "
Nathan Englander
Work
Isolation
Special
" There was a summer in college where I worked for a stretch picking up garbage at the beach. On the early shift, it was very meditative walking the shoreline and crisscrossing the sand, picking up the junk people had dropped or tossed or that the ocean had returned. And there was this strange fantasy element to it. "
Nathan Englander
Beach
College
Ocean
" 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. "
Nathan Englander
Time
Trying
Sea
" I think in circles; I speak in circles. I unravel my thoughts that way. "
Nathan Englander
Way
Think
Circles
" Human experience is infinite. Lives are infinite. Stories are infinite. Just because one story has gravity in it doesn't mean you can't write a different one with gravity in it. "
Nathan Englander
Story
You
Just Because
" 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. "
Nathan Englander
Personal
Off
Need