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" 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
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" There's no such thing as being a cultural Jew. You're religious or you're not. "
Nathan Englander
Cultural
You
Being
" 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 kind of in love with my theater agent. I'm a true naive about the theater, a total innocent. "
Nathan Englander
Kind
True
Innocent
" 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. "
Nathan Englander
Language
Love
Over
" 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
" 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
" I wrote a novel, so now they can call me a novelist. I tell stories; that's it. "
Nathan Englander
Call
Me
Now
" 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
" 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
" I'm very interested in how people change. "
Nathan Englander
Very
People Change
People
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Every book is vulnerable, and every book is nerve-wracking, but I've never been both so excited and terrified to have a book coming into the world. It's an expressly loaded subject, one on which you can't win. "
Nathan Englander
Win
Never
Excited
" 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
Silence
Saying
Living
" 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
" 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 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" So many people discuss, you know, Israel/Palestine as if it's people on a spectrum. "
Nathan Englander
Many
Spectrum
People
" I moved to New York because I thrive there. "
Nathan Englander
New
York
Thrive
" 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
" 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
" 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