Shay Golden

Shay Golden (born 1971) is an Israeli author and journalist.

Shai Golden, 2015

Quotes

• "I think a very cynical generation of journalists has grown in Israel, deeply believing that the public is stupid, that the readers are Neanderthal baboons. I reject this notion. They are given sensationalistic and loud tabloids with subpar headlines and subheadings, texts at a high school level with wit, irony, and knowledge that wouldn't pass a first-year journalism course. The front pages of the newspapers look like they were written by a horny, childish, uneducated teenager lacking historical sense and a complex worldview."
• "It is an exile mentality rooted in the Jewish complex that is ashamed of itself and wants to please the non-Jews to survive in a universal space. Here lies the paradox; they suppress Jewish symbols from a survivalist standpoint. They are willing to erase Judaism but forget that a nation without a national identity cannot exist." — on those fighting against 'religious coercion'
• "Overall, I would say our situation is not bad. And if we just move aside the entire government, the media, the army, the security services, the court, the families of the kidnapped, the Americans, the protesters, and Hamas and Hezbollah, then absolute victory is really just a matter of time." — June 20, 2024

About Himself

• "To me, life is a series of courage tests."
• "I consciously chose to be authentic and real. This has many controversial aspects, but I told myself that if I'm already putting myself out there, it's better to tell the truth. To be a poster figure that rewrites itself and checks how everything it says will look and affect it—how can one live such a life? It's better to die. The tragedy of people who avoid life's pleasures, their thoughts, the actions they want to do. We have gatekeepers who maintain social order."
• "There is nothing in our early childhood that even begins to resemble a normal childhood. In the orphanages, we experienced and were exposed to sexual abuse and violence. We were devoid of identity, growing up with a deep sense of rejection. They adopted us, and in an instant, I became Shay of whom? Of Golden. I will forever roam the world with this shiny name that I was given. I truly was given it, and above all, I was given my parents." — on his adoptive parents
• A Pause Between Disasters (2013)
  • "If you exercise the brain muscle enough times, you find that when it's in shape, the brain has the ability to achieve quite significant results."
  • "In the months leading up to the long-awaited trip, I told everyone at school and to Galit that my father was Bruce Springsteen and that I was going to America to meet him."
  • "The musician who would probably teach me to play guitar, sing hoarsely, play baseball, eat a hamburger in a rustic bun, and wear a blue-collar worker's cap."
• The Good Son (2008)
  • "Could be. Could be. Anything could be."
  • "And Dad said, 'Mom said she can't deal with you. She can't say no to you. Everything you want—we do. You are everything to us. You are our life.' And then Ran said to me, 'They are just saying that.'"
  • "My eyes sparkled at the sound of the hoofbeats of the fastest horse in the world, Fred the Beautiful's horse, hoofbeats that galloped into my eyes, into my head, and lived in my thoughts with many other gallops, of other horses, some I actually rode and some whose wings do not reach memory."
• The Invention of Life (2021)
  • "We both truly lived these lives, he as my father and I as his son, and that cannot be disputed. We both remember our lives—he his and I mine, he mine and I his."
  • "There is no life without memory, no identity without memory. The events themselves do not define a person's life but rather the way he remembers them."
  • "Words cannot create an unequivocal truth or stand sand on its feet in the form of a structure. That is, they can, but with one puff, the entire structure will collapse and be replaced, as if it had never stood there, by a structure that other, new words erected. The unbearable elusiveness of reality forces me to fight for my life, my identity, my existence."