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" 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

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" 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?' "

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

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

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