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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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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
Exists
Israel
Hundred
Dream
Nothing
Years
Existed
Fulfilled

More quotes by Amos Oz

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That's my gutsy advice to any young writer: write only about what you know well.
Amos Oz
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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.
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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Well, my definition of a tragedy is a clash between right and right.
Amos Oz
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Everybody comes from somewhere.
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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Almost without exception, my novels are rooted in Israel because that's the place I know well.
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
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Literature is about telling stories.
Amos Oz
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If we don't stop somewhere, if we don't accept an unhappy compromise, unhappy for both sides, if we don't learn how to unhappily coexist and contain our burned sense of injustice - if we don't learn how to do that, we end up in a doomed state.
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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Israel has obviously not liberated the Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank. We have occupied them, but we have not liberated them.
Amos Oz
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Universally, not only in Israel, people want to feel good about themselves. We all want to feel good to some extent.
Amos Oz
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Every single pleasure I can imagine or have experienced is more delightful, more of a pleasure, if you take it in small sips, if you take your time. Reading is not an exception.
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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You know, gynecology has a role sex is a gift. And literature is not about sending messages.
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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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
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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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The battlefield is first and foremost horrible stenches, not sights, not sounds, but stenches. They don't travel well into literature.
Amos Oz