Q177: Etgar Keret

Just finished reading Four Stories, a small collection of writings by Etgar Keret.   If you haven't read anything by him, I'd encourage you to find some of his work — it's available at different places around the Web.    Here are a few quotes:


"[...] a great work of art is often just residual evidence of a great human soul.  [...]  what we call 'craft' is really just the means by which the writer manages to give clear passage to these positive virtues."

— George Saunders, from the introduction

"There is not one emotion that I have that you don't share with me.   What it means to be afraid or cold or hungry — maybe I felt it ten thousand times more than you'll ever do.  But you can understand it, for sure.   And it's your duty to try and understand it.  You cannot be excused from that."

— Keret, quoting his father

"But you don't always have to understand to learn from something."

— Keret

The book also contained the (extremely) short work called "Asthma Attack", which summarizes Keret's philosophy of writing.   It's like a one-paragraph writing seminar.    Here's a link to a copy online...

A Baby Sermon

"A Baby Sermon" - George MacDonald


The lightning and thunder
They go and they come:
But the stars and the stillness
Are always at home.

Poor Substitute

"What is love?  What is love in the time of ecstasy? 
[...] Don't tell me that he died for that."

—  from "Love In the Time of Ecstasy", by Withered Hand (Dan Wilson)

Q176: The minority that matters

"One of the great strengths of common law has been its general antipathy toward group rights, because the ultimate minority, the minority that matters, is the individual.   The minute you have collective rights, you require dramatically enhanced state power to mediate the hierarchy of different victim groups."

— Mark Steyn