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

Nathan Englander

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

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" 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

" 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. "

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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. "

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" 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

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

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

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

Nathan Englander

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

Nathan Englander

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

Nathan Englander

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

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" 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

" 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 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

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

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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

" 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

" 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 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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'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?' "

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

Nathan Englander

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

Nathan Englander