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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

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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
Fulfillment
Israel
Dreams
Fact
Facts
Nature
Flawed
Dream
Testimony
Much
Failures

More quotes by 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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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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In my vocabulary, the word compromise is synonymous to the word life.
Amos Oz
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There are certain concepts, which exist in english, and are unthinkable, untranslatable into Hebrew and vice versa.
Amos Oz
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The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a tragedy it is a clash between right and right. And, therefore it's not black and white. Sometimes, recently it is indeed a clash between wrong and wrong. It is not as simple as fascism was.
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 belongs first and foremost to the language in which it is being written.
Amos Oz
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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
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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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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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I find the family the most mysterious and fascinating institution in the world.
Amos Oz
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I recommend the art of slow reading.
Amos Oz
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Over 70 years after Hitler, a German chancellor, a woman, is the leader of the free world. So don't talk to me about irrevocable.
Amos Oz
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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
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Each time I have the urge in me to make a statement or send a message or to issue a manifesto, I don't bother to write a novel. I write an article and publish it in a popular newspaper, or I make a television appearance.
Amos Oz
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My musical instrument is Hebrew and, to me, this is the most important fact about my writing. I write in words. I don write in sounds or in shapes or in flavors. I write in words. And my words are Hebrew words.
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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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
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I follow the way people change. I follow the way people, who are very antagonized to one another become very close to one another and vice-versa. Sometimes I follow the way people who are intimately close to each other move apart. This is my business as a novelist. It is not about positions and ideas.
Amos Oz
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The Old Testament is full of poetry, prophecies, chronicles, documentations, storytelling, fairytales.
Amos Oz