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

Nathan Englander

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

Nathan Englander

" 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

" 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

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

Nathan Englander

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

Nathan Englander

" 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

" I'd chosen to dedicate my life to writing, and I asked myself, 'if you write your whole life, and nobody ever sees a word, is it as a writer that you die?' "

Nathan Englander

" 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

" 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

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

Nathan Englander

" Palestine isn't a state when it concerns statehood. When it comes to warring, it's a state, yes? The Palestinians, they live in a country, for the purpose of war. "

Nathan Englander

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

Nathan Englander

" 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

" 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

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

Nathan Englander

" 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

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

Nathan Englander

" Whatever part of writing that is subconscious is a thing that no one has access to. "

Nathan Englander

" 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. "

Nathan Englander

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

Nathan Englander

" 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

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

Nathan Englander

" 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. "

Nathan Englander

" 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

" I wrote a novel, so now they can call me a novelist. I tell stories; that's it. "

Nathan Englander

" 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. "

Nathan Englander

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

Nathan Englander

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

Nathan Englander

" 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

" 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