Quote

Think about Elizabethan English, where the entire English language behaved pretty much like molten lava, like a volcano in mid-eruption. Modern Hebrew has some things in common with Elizabethan English. It is being reshaped and it's expanding very rapidly in various directions.

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
Common
Rapidly
Molten
Language
Directions
Elizabethan
Much
Expanding
Eruption
Things
English
Volcano
Think
Various
Lava
Thinking
Entire
Volcanoes
Like
Pretty
Behaved
Modern
Hebrew
Reshaped

More quotes by Amos Oz

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Not now, for the last three thousand years, Hebrew has been penetrated and fertilized by ancient Semitic languages - by Aramaic, by Greek, by Latin, by Arabic, by Yiddish, by Latino, by German, by Russian, by English, I could go on and on. It's very much like English.
Amos Oz
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I want Israel to live in peace with its neighbors and in peace with itself.
Amos Oz
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The opposite of compromise is not integrity. The opposite of compromise is not idealism. The opposite of compromise is fanaticism and death.
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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Actually, who hasn't been through the ghastly experience of sitting in front of a blank page, with its toothless mouth grinning at you: Go ahead, let's see you lay a finger on me? A blank page is actually a whitewashed wall with no door and no window. Beginning to tell a story is like making a pass at a total stranger in a restaurant.
Amos Oz
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The actual gap between Labor, Likud and the new central party is microscopic.
Amos Oz
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Everybody comes from somewhere.
Amos Oz
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When people have peace, they hate it and long for excitement, and when they have excitement, they want peace.
Amos Oz
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You know, gynecology has a role sex is a gift. And literature is not about sending messages.
Amos Oz
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Literature is about telling stories.
Amos Oz
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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.
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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It's possible a Palestinian state will be installed over the heads of the Palestinians. It could be part of an agreement between the Israeli government and moderate Arab states, but not one between Israel and the Palestinians.
Amos Oz
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Israel is a fulfilled dream. Nothing that exists here existed here a hundred years ago.
Amos Oz
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This bloody conflict has been going on for much too long. It is doing terrible things to Israelis, to Palestinians. One of the terrible things it is causing is indifference.
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.
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. I prefer to talk about the gift of literature rather than its role or task. You know, gynecology has a role sex is a gift. And literature is not about sending messages.
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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Literature is not made of ideas and it's not made of concepts, of psychological analysis. It's made of words.
Amos Oz
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Every decent man had to be against fascism, period.
Amos Oz