I'm kind of in love with my theater agent. I'm a true naive about the theater, a total innocent. Nathan Englander More Quotes by Nathan Englander More Quotes From 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 some-peoplenewtimepeople 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 just-becausestoryyouexperience Empathy is what obsesses me. And watching empathy recede in the world is terrifying. Nathan Englander watchingmeempathyworld 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 sayinggreatyousilence 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 parentsyouunhappyworld 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 memotherhomesports 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 alwaysconflicttimepeace 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 deepcharacterbookreality So many people discuss, you know, Israel/Palestine as if it's people on a spectrum. Nathan Englander knowyouspectrumpeople 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 promisessafetydreamwriting 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 feelstartmei-can 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 i-was-raisedtraditionlanguagetime 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 wordsdaylanguagelove When you see 'editor' on a book, there are many permutations of what that title can mean. Nathan Englander seeyoumeanbook 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 my-lifemyselfyoulife 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 womani-amdayage 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 womanstorygayeasy 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 thoughtspecialworktime 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 bestyouworkpeople 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 winyoubookworld
