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My musical instrument is Hebrew and, to me, this is the most important fact about my writing.

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
Musical
Fact
Facts
Important
Writing
Hebrew
Instrument
Instruments

More quotes by Amos Oz

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In many ways, I regard Sharon and Arafat as birds of a feather.
Amos Oz
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Recently with IS and Islamist fanaticism, it has become easy for the Israeli government to simply push the Palestinian struggle for self-determination into the same ranks as these fundamentalist movements.
Amos Oz
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But for 30 years, Orthodox leaders have tipped the balance between hawks and doves, and have been in a position to determine who forms a coalition and who runs the country.
Amos Oz
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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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A conflict begins and ends in the hearts and minds of people, not in the hilltops.
Amos Oz
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Literature may open a third eye in the middle of the reader's forehead.
Amos Oz
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Don't write about that which you don't know.
Amos Oz
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I write in words. And my words are Hebrew words.
Amos Oz
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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.
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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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.
Amos Oz
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When I need to take a side, I write a newspaper article and I tell my government, You should not do that, you should do this. They don't listen to me, but I've been doing this for sixty years now. But, when I write a novel, I am not in that business.
Amos Oz
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Literature is about telling stories.
Amos Oz
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I know that a translation of a work of literature is like playing a violin concerto on the piano. You can do this. You can do this very successfully on one strict condition: never try to force the piano to produce the sounds of the violin. This will be grotesque.
Amos Oz
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Every language has influences and is an influence.
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
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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
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In my vocabulary, the word compromise is synonymous to the word life.
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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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