“He felt full of a dense and sour substance that was blocking his chest, and it wasn't grief. After all those years, life now seemed like no more than a trap, a maze, not even a maze, just a room that was all walls, no door.”

Etgar Keret
Life Neutral

Explore This Quote Further

Quote by Etgar Keret: “He felt full of a dense and sour substance that … - Image 1
Quote by Etgar Keret: “He felt full of a dense and sour substance that … - Image 2

Similar quotes

“His whole body was completely still, except the wings, which were still fluttering a little, like when someone dies. That's when he finally understood that of all the things the angel had told him, nothing was true. That he wasn't even an angel, just a liar with wings.”


“...but I felt then the same way Nicky did, that I was getting myself more life. Not necessarily a better life, not a life more promising than the one I already had. But because I thought this life was in addition to and not instead of, I devoured it without a second's hesitation.”


“There are two kinds of people, those who like to sleep next to the wall, and those who like to sleep next to the people who push them off the bed.”


“I have always thought that Heaven is a place for people who had had a good life, but that is not true. God is merciful and way too good to make it so. The Heaven is just a place for people who could not be really happy while living on Earth. I was once told that people who commit suicide are taken back on Earth to repeat life from the very beginning because if they did not like it once, it did not mean they would not like it the next time. But those who did not fit in on Earth at all, ended up here. Everyone comes to Heaven in their own way.”


“He actually had a relationship once with someone who’d committed suicide. Not emotional, physical. It happened in the army. He was serving in general-staff headquarters at the time, and he’d been brought up on charges of being seen with his boots unpolished. And just when he was walking past the tall staff headquarters building, someone dropped to the ground next to him, splattered. A girl-soldier, they said, with a broken heart, a corporal, Liat Something. Later he remembered hearing a kind of scream above him as she was falling. But he hadn’t looked up. The sound didn’t even register.He reached the hearing all covered in her blood. They let him off. Liat Atlas. That was her name. They even called on him later, to testify at the military police investigation. It couldn’t go on this way, that much he knew. Maybe he needed therapy.”


“Ehud was tall and strong and was always quiet. Lots of people thought that Ehud was quiet because he was stupid. That wasn’t true. He may not have been the smartest kid on the block, but he was no moron either.”