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

Nathan Englander

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

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" 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

" 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

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

Nathan Englander

" 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

" 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'm very interested in how people change. "

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

" 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

" 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. "

Nathan Englander

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

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

" 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 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. "

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

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

Nathan Englander

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

Nathan Englander

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

Nathan Englander

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

Nathan Englander

" 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

" 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

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

Nathan Englander

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

Nathan Englander

" 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

" 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 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

" 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

" 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

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

Nathan Englander