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" 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
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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
Jerusalem
Lived
Neighbors
" 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
" Whatever part of writing that is subconscious is a thing that no one has access to. "
Nathan Englander
Subconscious
Whatever
Access
" I was resistant to the Internet. I was afraid of it. "
Nathan Englander
Afraid
Resistant
Internet
" 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
" Philip Roth has been a huge influence on me. The early books I read in my teens and twenties. "
Nathan Englander
Early
Influence
Me
" I think in circles; I speak in circles. I unravel my thoughts that way. "
Nathan Englander
Way
Think
Circles
" Everything is so much clearer once a world is framed. Maybe it sounds crazy, but with writing, it's infinity that is limiting and the limited that allows for the truly infinite. Once all those elements are in place in a story, the brain is truly freed up to imagine without end. "
Nathan Englander
Crazy
Story
End
" 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'd say that in place of a singular phobic-level terror, I keep a whole collection of running, yet manageable, fears. "
Nathan Englander
Running
Keep
Collection
" 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
" 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
Yes
Live
State
" There's no such thing as being a cultural Jew. You're religious or you're not. "
Nathan Englander
Cultural
You
Being
" 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
Writing
You
Been
" 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
Lucky
Brain
Know
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" When you see 'editor' on a book, there are many permutations of what that title can mean. "
Nathan Englander
Title
Editor
Book
" 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
" 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
" Twitter is the best art for writers. I find it enticing. "
Nathan Englander
Enticing
Art
Find
" 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. "
Nathan Englander
I Can
Start
Career
" 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
" 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
" 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
Die
You
My Life
" I'm very interested in how people change. "
Nathan Englander
Very
People Change
People
" 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. "
Nathan Englander
Poetry
Honest
Writing
" I love those books and movies where someone turns because they're blackmailed or they're passed over for promotion. "
Nathan Englander
Love
Over
Promotion