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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.

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
Way
System
Time
Probably
Bigs
Tenses
Means
Hebrew
Sense
European
Reality
Concept
Mean
English
Different
Concepts

More quotes by Amos Oz

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My dream for Israel is peace, external and internal peace. I want Israel to live in peace with its neighbors and in peace with itself.
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I am an old man and I have seen things get revoked. Things which looked very irrevocable.
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I'm a great believer in compromises. I do not believe in capitulation.
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Fundamentalist s live life with an exclamation point. I prefer to live my life with a question mark.
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Literature is about telling stories. Now, the gift of literature is that, in some lucky cases, reading a novel or a story makes the reader more curious, more open-minded. It may open a third eye in the middle of the reader's forehead.
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I recommend the art of slow reading.
Amos Oz
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The State of the Jews was not a title of a country. It was a title of a futuristic novel.
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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.
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Many intellectuals in America and in Europe, they are in the habit of taking sides: who are the bad guys? who are the good guys? They launch a demonstration against the bad guys, sign a petition in favor of the good guys, and going to sleep feeling well about themselves.
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Everybody comes from somewhere.
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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.
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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.
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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
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We lived through a relatively golden age between the end of World War II and Sept. 11, 2001.
Amos Oz
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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.
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Israel has obviously not liberated the Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank. We have occupied them, but we have not liberated them.
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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
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Every decent man had to be against fascism, period.
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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.
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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