Quote

Words create conceptions and self-conceptions and ultimately nations. They can start and stop wars. They can would and heal. Choosing words carefully is a moral responsibility.

Amos Oz

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Amos Oz
Age: 79 †
Born: 1939
Born: May 4
Died: 2018
Died: December 28
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Linguist
Novelist
Pedagogue
Poet
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Jerusalem
Middle East
Amos Klausner
Responsibility
Choosing
Moral
Carefully
Nations
Conception
Start
Wars
Words
Heal
War
Ultimately
Self
Create
Would
Stop
Conceptions

More quotes by Amos Oz

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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.
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There is a document in every novel in the world. Even in the most fantastic novel, even in science fiction, there is a documentary side. But, this side is not the crux of the matter.
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I wrote The Same Sea not as a political allegory about Israelis and Palestinians. I wrote it about something much more gutsy and immediate. I wrote it as a piece of chamber music.
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In the same way in which music is made of notes and a painting is made of lines of colors, the matter of literature are words.
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I find the family the most mysterious and fascinating institution in the world.
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The kibbutz way of life is not for everyone. It is meant for people who are not in the business of working harder than they should be working, in order to make more money than they need, in order to buy things they don't really want, in order to impress people they don't really like.
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I don't write novels about expeditions to the planet Mars because I haven't been there and I don't know anything about it.
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Do not cut lose from your longings - for what are we without our longings?
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Imagination needs food like every dog and every cat and every bird and every fish.
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Dreams fulfilled are imperfect.
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Out there, in the world, all the walls were covered with graffiti: Yids, go back to Palestine, so we came back to Palestine, and now the worldatlarge shouts at us: Yids, get out of Palestine.
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That's my gutsy advice to any young writer: write only about what you know well.
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Every decent man had to be against fascism, period.
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A long war is degenerating - it ruins the mind and the soul and psyche of individuals and nations.
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Well, my definition of a tragedy is a clash between right and right.
Amos Oz
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Over 70 years after Hitler, a German chancellor, a woman, is the leader of the free world. So don't talk to me about irrevocable.
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Donald Trump basically said: One state, two states, do whatever you like. I do not think this was a serious statement of American policy. This was him shrugging his shoulders and saying: Who cares about it. I think he doesn't even have the faintest idea of what he wants to do in the Middle East.
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We lived through a relatively golden age between the end of World War II and Sept. 11, 2001.
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I want Israel to live in peace with its neighbors and in peace with itself.
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I was born and bred in a tiny, low-ceilinged ground-floor apartment.
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