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Things can be translated, but they become different.

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
Translated
Become
Different
Things

More quotes by Amos Oz

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I recommend the art of slow reading.
Amos Oz
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The English language took in many many fertilizations, many many genes, from other languages, from foreign languages - Latin, French, Nordic languages, German, Scandinavian languages.
Amos Oz
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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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I write in words. I don't write in sounds or in shapes or in flavors.
Amos Oz
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Almost every modern literary form existed in Hebrew two thousand years ago. And, yes, it existed even during the middle ages.
Amos Oz
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If you change your diet, someone will call you a traitor.
Amos Oz
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The place of my novels is Israel, almost without exception. All of them take place in Israel - in Jerusalem, in the desert, in the kibbutz, in small towns, in villages.
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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Literature may make the reader reexamine some of his or her own conventions, look at himself or herself in a different way, look at others in a different way. This goes way beyond just making statements or manifesting principles.
Amos Oz
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Writing a poem is like having an affair, a one-night stand a short story is a romance, a relationship a novel is a marriage-one has to be cunning, devise compromises, and make sacrifices.
Amos Oz
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My dream for Israel is peace, external and internal peace.
Amos Oz
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Israel is imperfect, of course it is - a far cry from the monumental dreams of the founding fathers. One of the reasons is that their dreams were unrealistic. They were bigger than life. These were messianic dreams, dreams about total redemption for the Jews, for the world. Such dreams do not come true, not in their entirety.
Amos Oz
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In my vocabulary, the word compromise is synonymous to the word life.
Amos Oz
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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
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I write about reconciliation, but not as a miracle, as a slow, gradual process of mutual discovery - discovering one another.
Amos Oz
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The [political] left are people with an imagination and the right are those without an imagination.
Amos Oz
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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.
Amos Oz
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I'm not sure I'm happy with words such as task or role when they are attached to literature.
Amos Oz
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I often write about reconciling. Reconciling, or maybe half-reconciling between antagonists, between people who are deadly enemies. I write about reconciliation, but not as a miracle, as a slow, gradual process of mutual discovery - discovering one another. I write about sad, sober, sometimes heart-breaking compromises.
Amos Oz
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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.
Amos Oz