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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

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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
Years
Reader
Settlement
Would
Policy
Israeli
Life
Stop
Readers
Five
Send
Simple
Message
Peace
Strive
Order
Messages
Change
Waste
Settlements

More quotes by Amos Oz

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A conflict begins and ends in the hearts and minds of people, not in the hilltops.
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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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A long war is degenerating - it ruins the mind and the soul and psyche of individuals and nations.
Amos Oz
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The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a tragedy it is a clash between right and right. And, therefore it's not black and white. Sometimes, recently it is indeed a clash between wrong and wrong. It is not as simple as fascism was.
Amos Oz
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My musical instrument is Hebrew and, to me, this is the most important fact about my writing. I write in words. I don write in sounds or in shapes or in flavors. I write in words. And my words are Hebrew words.
Amos Oz
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I follow the way people change. I follow the way people, who are very antagonized to one another become very close to one another and vice-versa. Sometimes I follow the way people who are intimately close to each other move apart. This is my business as a novelist. It is not about positions and ideas.
Amos Oz
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Hebrew is deeply inspired by other languages.
Amos Oz
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Literature is about telling stories.
Amos Oz
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One of the things I wanted to introduce in The Same Sea beyond transcending the conflict, is the fact that deep down below all our secrets are the same.
Amos Oz
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The gift of literature is that, in some lucky cases, reading a novel or a story makes the reader more curious, more open-minded.
Amos Oz
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I have seen for the first time in 100 years of conflict, the two peoples - the Israeli people and the Palestinian people - are ahead of their leaderships.
Amos Oz
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We have to carry through to the next day and hope that we will be okay tomorrow as we are today and in the meantime, enjoy life.
Amos Oz
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Each time I have the urge in me to make a statement or send a message or to issue a manifesto, I don't bother to write a novel. I write an article and publish it in a popular newspaper, or I make a television appearance.
Amos Oz
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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.
Amos Oz
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I often write about reconciling. Reconciling, or maybe half-reconciling between antagonists, between people who are deadly enemies.
Amos Oz
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Democracy in many parts of the world is undergoing a very deep crisis. Politics is becoming a branch of the entertainment industry. People vote not for the best leader, but for the funniest candidate.
Amos Oz
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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. And, sometimes in very, very different places, because we all come from somewhere, especially here in Israel.
Amos Oz
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Every single pleasure I can imagine or have experienced is more delightful, more of a pleasure, if you take it in small sips, if you take your time. Reading is not an exception.
Amos Oz
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The Old Testament is full of poetry, prophecies, chronicles, documentations, storytelling, fairytales.
Amos Oz
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The whole Zionist project was based on a whole spectrum of different and even conflicting dreams and visions.
Amos Oz