Amos Oz Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• The reconciliation is not based on the fact that one of the characters opens his eyes and says, "O brother! O sister! How terrible I was! How right and wonderful you were! Please forgive me! Let's hug and love each other from now until the rest of eternity!" This is not the kind of reconciliation I write about; I write about sad, sober, sometimes heart-breaking compromises.

  Amos Oz

  Brother, Writing, Heart

  "'Everybody comes from somewhere.' An Interview with Writer Amos Oz". Interview with Prashanth Ramakrishna, logger.believermag.com. October 20, 2016.

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• Of course, we carry inside of ourselves our parents. Even when they are dead, we carry them inside ourselves. And they are carrying inside themselves their dead parents and so on and so forth. There is a legacy of language and culture and religion.

  Amos Oz

  Parent, Culture, Legacy

  "'Everybody comes from somewhere.' An Interview with Writer Amos Oz". Interview with Prashanth Ramakrishna, logger.believermag.com. October 20, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

• No human being really begins on the day which appears in the passport as their date of birth. We all begin much much much earlier.

  Amos Oz

  Being Real, Birth, Passports

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• That's my gutsy advice to any young writer: write only about what you know well.

  Amos Oz

  Writing, Advice, Young Writers

  "'Everybody comes from somewhere.' An Interview with Writer Amos Oz". Interview with Prashanth Ramakrishna, logger.believermag.com. October 20, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

• I don't think Israelis are less critical of corruption than people in Italy, France or America. Israel is special in a different way. There is a daytime Israel and a nighttime Israel. The first is self-confident, pushy and passionate, like other Mediterranean lands. It is hedonistic, materialistic and almost arrogant. During the nighttime, people are terrified, people are filled with existential dreads. These fears aren't baseless.

  Amos Oz

  Thinking, America, Israel

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• I would love to leave my children and grandchildren a nicer world than the one I am going to leave them. But bearing in mind that I was born in the world of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, the legacy I leave them might not be as terrible as the legacy my parents and grandparents left to me.

  Amos Oz

  Children, Grandparent, Mind

  Source: www.spiegel.de

  6 Copy quote

• The whole Zionist project was based on a whole spectrum of different and even conflicting dreams and visions.

  Amos Oz

  Dream, Vision, Different

  "'Everybody comes from somewhere.' An Interview with Writer Amos Oz". Interview with Prashanth Ramakrishna, logger.believermag.com. October 20, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

• I think there are one or two things similar in Elizabethan English and contemporary Hebrew. This is not to say that every one of us Israeli writers is a William Shakespeare, but there is a certain similarity to Elizabethan English.

  Amos Oz

  Thinking, Two, Hebrew

  "'Everybody comes from somewhere.' An Interview with Writer Amos Oz". Interview with Prashanth Ramakrishna, logger.believermag.com. October 20, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

• I would not waste five years of my life in order to send to the Israeli readers a simple message such as, "Let us change a policy or stop the settlements," Or, "Let us strive for peace." This is not what it is about.

  Amos Oz

  Simple, Order, Years

  "'Everybody comes from somewhere.' An Interview with Writer Amos Oz". Interview with Prashanth Ramakrishna, logger.believermag.com. October 20, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

• I know one or two things about fanaticism and death, and I reject them.

  Amos Oz

  Two, Rejects, Knows

  "'Everybody comes from somewhere.' An Interview with Writer Amos Oz". Interview with Prashanth Ramakrishna, logger.believermag.com. October 20, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

• Think about Elizabethan English, where the entire English language behaved pretty much like molten lava, like a volcano in mid-eruption. Modern Hebrew has some things in common with Elizabethan English. It is being reshaped and it's expanding very rapidly in various directions.

  Amos Oz

  Thinking, Volcanoes, Lava

  "'Everybody comes from somewhere.' An Interview with Writer Amos Oz". Interview with Prashanth Ramakrishna, logger.believermag.com. October 20, 2016.

  10 Copy quote

• I don't envy Netanyahu's situation, because I think he is in hot water. Obviously, this man has a totally different sense of personal morality than some of our previous political leaders. What would I personally like to see? I would like to see this government go straight to hell. And I would have liked to have seen the previous government go straight to hell.

  Amos Oz

  Men, Thinking, Envy

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• The morning I woke up and it was announced that Trump was the elected president of the United States, I wrote to Angela Merkel. I said that she - at least for me - is now the leader of the free world.

  Amos Oz

  Morning, Leader, President

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• What is likely to happen? Either an escalation of violence or an entire change in the whole Middle East theater. It may well happen, and I say this to my Palestinian friends, that the Palestinians have in a certain way missed their hour. They had their moment when the world's public opinion was behind them, and a considerable part of the Israeli public was willing to compromise with them.

  Amos Oz

  Middle East, Public Opinion, World

  Source: www.spiegel.de

  4 Copy quote

• I'm a great believer in compromises. I do not believe in capitulation.

  Amos Oz

  Believe, Compromise, Believer

  "'Everybody comes from somewhere.' An Interview with Writer Amos Oz". Interview with Prashanth Ramakrishna, logger.believermag.com. October 20, 2016.

  7 Copy quote

• All my novels are rooted in their time and in their place.

  Amos Oz

  Novel, Rooted

  "'Everybody comes from somewhere.' An Interview with Writer Amos Oz". Interview with Prashanth Ramakrishna, logger.believermag.com. October 20, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

• I often write about reconciling. Reconciling, or maybe half-reconciling between antagonists, between people who are deadly enemies.

  Amos Oz

  Writing, People, Enemy

  "'Everybody comes from somewhere.' An Interview with Writer Amos Oz". Interview with Prashanth Ramakrishna, logger.believermag.com. October 20, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

• There are certain concepts, which exist in English, and are unthinkable, untranslatable into Hebrew and vice versa. Hebrew has a system of tenses, which is, in a big way, different from the English system of tenses, probably different than any European system of tenses, which means a different sense of reality, which means a different concept of time. So, things can be translated, but they become different.

  Amos Oz

  Mean, Reality, Different

  Source: logger.believermag.com

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• Of course my books are translated into many languages. I have here, in my home, translations on my shelf of my books into forty-five different languages. Almost none of them I can read. I can read only the English editions. But, I know that a translation of a work of literature is like playing a violin concerto on the piano. You can do this. You can do this very successfully on one strict condition: never try to force the piano to produce the sounds of the violin. This will be grotesque. So, different musical instruments provide for different music.

  Amos Oz

  Book, Home, Musical

  Source: logger.believermag.com

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• The opposite of compromise is not integrity. The opposite of compromise is not idealism. The opposite of compromise is fanaticism and death. And yes, I know one or two things about fanaticism and death, and I reject them. The alternative to fanaticism and to death is not some miraculous realization that someone has been wrong and he has to apologize. No, the answer to fanaticism and to death is curiosity and compromise and concession.

  Amos Oz

  Integrity, Curiosity, Realization

  Source: logger.believermag.com

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• I don't think a decent person has to choose between being pro-Israel and pro-Palestine. I think you have to be pro-Peace.

  Amos Oz

  Thinking, Israel, Palestine

  "'Everybody comes from somewhere.' An Interview with Writer Amos Oz". Interview with Prashanth Ramakrishna, logger.believermag.com. October 20, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

• Of course, we carry inside of ourselves our parents. Even when they are dead, we carry them inside ourselves. And they are carrying inside themselves their dead parents and so on and so forth. There is a legacy of language and culture and religion. In some cases, family stories told by grandparents to little grandchildren. When I say my novels are set in Israel in the last seventy years, this entails the fact that they begin hundreds or thousands of years earlier in time. Everybody comes from somewhere.

  Amos Oz

  Grandchildren, Grandparent, Culture

  Source: logger.believermag.com

  4 Copy quote

• All my novels are rooted in their time and in their place. The place of my novels is Israel, almost without exception. Almost without exception, my novels are rooted in Israel because that's the place I know well. And, that's my gutsy advice to any young writer: write only about what you know well. Don't write about that which you don't know.

  Amos Oz

  Writing, Advice, Novel

  Source: logger.believermag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Literature is about telling stories.

  Amos Oz

  Stories, Literature, Telling Stories

  "'Everybody comes from somewhere.' An Interview with Writer Amos Oz". Interview with Prashanth Ramakrishna, logger.believermag.com. October 20, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

• Everybody comes from somewhere.

  Amos Oz

  Interview with Prashanth Ramakrishna, logger.believermag.com. October 20, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

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