Quote

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

Amos Oz

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Place
Time
Rooted
Novels
Novel

More quotes by Amos Oz

Image
I'm a great believer in compromise. I know it's not popular among young idealists.
Amos Oz
Image
If you steal from one book you are condemned as a plagiarist, but if you steal from ten books you are considered a scholar, and if you steal from thirty or forty books, a distinguished scholar.
Amos Oz
Image
The opposite of compromise is not integrity. The opposite of compromise is not idealism. The opposite of compromise is fanaticism and death.
Amos Oz
Image
I never regard my characters, my protagonists, as personifications. It's not that I sit by my desk and I pick up a character who will be the spokesperson of the Israeli Left, another one will be the spokesperson of the Right, another one will be the spokesperson of Middle Eastern Jews, European Jews, religions Jews and so on.
Amos Oz
Image
I don't think a novel's main donation, main gift, is the document. The document is there, but a novel goes beyond documentation. It goes into opening a new vista, opening a new perspective, showing familiar things in an unfamiliar way, and making the reader reconsider the documentary facts which he or she may have known before.
Amos Oz
Image
If people are pro-Israel, they are pro-Israel one-hundred-and-twenty percent. If they are anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian, they tend to be pro-Palestinian one-hundred-and-twenty percent.
Amos Oz
Image
I prefer to talk about the gift of literature rather than its role or task.
Amos Oz
Image
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
Image
Almost without exception, my novels are rooted in Israel because that's the place I know well.
Amos Oz
Image
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
Image
We all begin much much much earlier. In fact, every one of us - every nation, every individual begins hundreds, perhaps thousands of years prior to the date that appears in the passport.
Amos Oz
Image
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
Image
Literature belongs first and foremost to the language in which it is being written. The very same book, even if it is translated very accurately, let's say from Hebrew into English or from English into Hebrew, becomes a different book because language is a musical instrument.
Amos Oz
Image
Two children of same cruel parent look at one another and see in each other the image of the cruel parent or the image of their past oppressor. This is very much the case between Jew and Arab: It's a conflict between two victims.
Amos Oz
Image
I want Israel to live in peace with its neighbors and in peace with itself.
Amos Oz
Image
The only way to keep a dream, any dream at all, to keep a dream perfect and rosy and intact and unsullied is never to live it out.
Amos Oz
Image
Now, Israel is a fulfillment, and as a fulfillment, it is flawed. The fact that it is flawed is not so much a testimony about the failures of Israel. No, it is a testimony about the nature of dreams.
Amos Oz
Image
It is crystal clear to me that if Arabs put down a draft resolution blaming Israel for the recent earthquake in Iran it would probably have a majority, the U.S. would veto it and Britain and France would abstain.
Amos Oz
Image
I know one or two things about fanaticism and death, and I reject them.
Amos Oz
Image
I don't believe in binational states. There are wonderful examples of this, prosperous multinational states: Switzerland, Switzerland and Switzerland. Everywhere else - be it Cyprus, Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union, it ended in a terrible bloodbath.
Amos Oz