Yehuda Amichai Quotes

• The soul inside me is the last foreign language I'm learning.

  Yehuda Amichai

  Soul, Lasts, Language

  Yehuda Amichai (2006). “Open Closed Open: Poems”, p.48, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  18 Copy quote

• Jerusalem is a port city on the shore of eternity.

  Yehuda Amichai

  Israel, Cities, Jerusalem

  Yehuda Amichai (2013). “The Selected Poetry Of Yehuda Amichai”, p.54, Univ of California Press

  53 Copy quote

• Behind all this, some great happiness is hiding.

  Yehuda Amichai

  Happiness, Hiding, Behinds

  Yehuda Amichai (2013). “The Selected Poetry Of Yehuda Amichai”, p.95, Univ of California Press

  17 Copy quote

• From the place where we are right, flowers will not grow in the spring.

  Yehuda Amichai

  Spring, Flower, Grows

  32 Copy quote

• And as we stray further from love, we multiply the words. Had we remained together we could have become a silence.

  Yehuda Amichai

  Love, Silence, Together

  Yehuda Amichai (1992). “Poems of Jerusalem ; And, Love Poems: A Bilingual Edition”

  17 Copy quote

• Love is like a reservoir of kindness and pleasure, like silos and pools during a siege.

  Yehuda Amichai

  Kindness, Love Is, Siege

  18 Copy quote

• There are two languages: one as things seem to us and the other of knowledge.

  Yehuda Amichai

  Two, Language, Seems

  14 Copy quote

• My poems are political in the deeper sense of the word. Political means to live in your time, to be a man of your time.

  Yehuda Amichai

  Mean, Men, Political

  16 Copy quote

• It was not an adventure; it was my life.

  Yehuda Amichai

  Adventure

  13 Copy quote

• Here (Jerusalem), tears do not weaken the eyes, they only polish and shine the hardness of faces like stone.

  Yehuda Amichai

  Eye, Shining, Tears

  11 Copy quote

• I’ve never been in those places where I’ve never been and never will be, I have no share in the infinity of light-years and dark-years, but the darkness is mine, and the light, and my time is my own.

  Yehuda Amichai

  Dark, Light, Years

  Yehuda Amichai (2015). “The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai”, p.491, Macmillan

  15 Copy quote

• Every intelligent person, whether hes an artist or not - a mathematician, a doctor, a scientist - possesses a poetic way of seeing and describing the world.

  Yehuda Amichai

  Artist, Intelligent, Doctors

  12 Copy quote

• I've often said that all poetry is political. This is because real poems deal with a human response to reality and politics is part of reality, history in the making. Even if a poet writes about sitting in a glass house drinking tea, it reflects politics.

  Yehuda Amichai

  Real, Drinking, Writing

  15 Copy quote

• The reason a poet is a poet is to write poems, not to advertise himself as a poet.

  Yehuda Amichai

  Writing, Poet, Reason

  "Amichai, Israel´s Most Important and Influential Poet, Dies at 76". www.nytimes.com. September 22, 2000.

  11 Copy quote

• And I said to myself: That's true, hope needs to be like barbed wire to keep out despair, hope must be a mine field.

  Yehuda Amichai

  Despair, Wire, Needs

  Yehuda Amichai (2006). “Open Closed Open: Poems”, p.84, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  11 Copy quote

• I was a very religious child - I went to synagogue at least once, sometimes twice, a day. And I remember my religiousness as good - I think religion is good for children, especially educated children, because it allows for imagination, a whole imaginative world apart from the practical world.

  Yehuda Amichai

  Religious, Children, Thinking

  12 Copy quote

• I think the end is endless. It's either a big black hole or a big white light or both together. But it's totally meaningless, because even if someone would explain it, I wouldn't understand it.

  Yehuda Amichai

  Thinking, Light, White

  13 Copy quote

• Knowledge of peace passes from country to country, like children's games, which are so much alike, everywhere.

  Yehuda Amichai

  Country, Children, Games

  8 Copy quote

• What are you going to do now? You'll collect loves like stamps. You've got doubles and no one will trade with you. And you've got damaged ones.

  Yehuda Amichai

  Stamps, Trade

  "The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai".

  7 Copy quote

• A flock of sheep near the airport or a high voltage generator beside the orchard: these combinations open up my life like a wound, but they also heal it. That's why my feelings always come in twos.

  Yehuda Amichai

  Airports, Sheep, Feelings

  Yehuda Amichai (2013). “The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai”, p.152, Univ of California Press

  8 Copy quote

• I wanted to be calm, like a mound with all its cities destroyed, and tranquil, like a full cemetery.

  Yehuda Amichai

  Cities, Calm, Cemetery

  Yehuda Amichai, “I Have Become Very Hairy”

  10 Copy quote

• The phrase I like to use to describe my sense of time-a play on comparative literature - is comparative time.

  Yehuda Amichai

  Play, Phrases, Use

  "Amichai, Israel´s Most Important and Influential Poet, Dies at 76". www.nytimes.com. September 22, 2000.

  7 Copy quote

• God has pity on kindergarten children

  Yehuda Amichai

  Children, Kindergarten, Pity

  Yehuda Amichai (2013). “The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai”, p.18, Univ of California Press

  4 Copy quote

• Tonight I think again of many days that are sacrificed for one night of love. Of the waste and the fruit of the waste, of plenty and of fire. And how painlessly-time.

  Yehuda Amichai

  Time, Night, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• The world of religion isn't a logical world; that's why children like it. It's a world of worked-out fantasies, very similar to children's stories or fairy tales.

  Yehuda Amichai

  Children, Stories, World

  4 Copy quote

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