Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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

Related Quotes:

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

" 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 think in circles; I speak in circles. I unravel my thoughts that way. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I love those books and movies where someone turns because they're blackmailed or they're passed over for promotion. "

" I think my love for rhythm in language comes from repeating the same words, the same sounds, over and over again day after day for so many years. "

" Every nation should wrestle with the question of what it means to defend itself, what it means to take revenge. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I always call myself either an optimistic pessimist or a pessimistic optimist - I'm not sure which way it goes. "

" 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. "

" There was a terrible fear for me when I started writing, which was that if you'd been denied unbelievably tumultuous experience, you didn't have permission to write. "

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

" When you see 'editor' on a book, there are many permutations of what that title can mean. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

Nathan Englander

Early

Influence

" 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. "

" 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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

Same

" 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. "

" As someone who spent a lot of years living in Jerusalem, one of the great perks is that when you come back, and you get into these Israel arguments in your American-Jewish clan, you can really just silence them by saying, 'I lived there.' So we used it like a bludgeon. "