Etgar Keret Quotes

I stood up as best I could to their disgusting stupidity and brutality, but I did not, of course, manage to beat them at their own game. It was a fight to the bitter end, one in which I was not defending ideals or beliefs but simply my own self.

There's nothing but brutality and bravery or cowardice that comes out of war. That's pretty much it.

I've had friends who have experienced pretty horrible things, some pretty brutal things, and survived. And I know that they and I would never want them to be without the ability to defend themselves.

I should probably be afraid. But instead a hysterical laugh bubbles inside me, because I just remembered something: Maybe I can’t hold a gun. But I have a knife in my back pocket.

If we had not driven them into hell... hell would have swallowed us.

My choices were to either give in and let them kill all of us or fight back with everything I had. I chose the second one, ’cause I’m just funny that way.

I'm here because they've killed almost all of us, but not all of us. And that's their mistake, son. That's the flaw in their plan. Because if you don't kill all of us at once, whoever's left are not going to be the weak ones. The strong ones- and only the strong ones- will survive. The bent but unbroken, if you know what I mean. People like me. And people like you.

All men kill the thing they hate, too, unless, of course, it kills them first.

When you're in the battlefield, survival is all there is. Death is the only great emotion.

No damn man kills me and lives.

It's like kill or be killed, that's my thing basically.

A sweaty Macbeth with blood on his arms coming in fresh from the battle doesn't interest me.

In war, people find themselves in extraordinary circumstances, and in those circumstances, they act in extraordinary ways. In war, you see people at their very best and their very worst, acting in ways you could never imagine. War is human drama at its most epic and most intense.

I think the brutality is important to convey as part of the story, to see how brutal it is to have these kids in battle with one another.

You live by the gun and knife, and die by the gun and knife.

When people are hungry, when a mother or father is facing a child that they can't feed, you can't ask that family to lay down their arms.

We shall heal our wounds, collect our dead and continue fighting.

War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.

When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk.

I have experienced within my own lifetime the attack of my winter camp and the killing of the women and children. It left me even angrier than I was - and I was never too calm to begin with.

The natural reaction people have when violence has been used against them is to react violently.

I'm not going to hide, I'm not going to surrender.

If one comes to kill you, make haste and kill him first.

I can hear you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.

I wasn't a hero. I just got shot.