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

Nathan Englander

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" 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

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

Nathan Englander

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

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

Nathan Englander

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

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

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

Nathan Englander

" 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

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

Nathan Englander

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

Nathan Englander

" 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

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

Nathan Englander

" 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

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

Nathan Englander

" 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. "

Nathan Englander

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

Nathan Englander

" 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

" 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

" 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

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

Nathan Englander

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

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

" 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

" 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

" 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