Quote

The State of the Jews was not a title of a country. It was a title of a futuristic novel.

Amos Oz

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Titles
Jew
Novel
State
States
Country
Futuristic
Title
Jews

More quotes by Amos Oz

Image
There are certain concepts, which exist in english, and are unthinkable, untranslatable into Hebrew and vice versa.
Amos Oz
Image
Literature belongs first and foremost to the language in which it is being written.
Amos Oz
Image
Literature exists inside the language. It's made of words.
Amos Oz
Image
I think there are one or two things similar in Elizabethan English and contemporary Hebrew. This is not to say that every one of us Israeli writers is a William Shakespeare, but there is a certain similarity to Elizabethan English.
Amos Oz
Image
The gift of literature is that, in some lucky cases, reading a novel or a story makes the reader more curious, more open-minded.
Amos Oz
Image
Well, my definition of a tragedy is a clash between right and right.
Amos Oz
Image
If you change your diet, someone will call you a traitor.
Amos Oz
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Different musical instruments provide for different music.
Amos Oz
Image
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
Image
All my novels are rooted in their time and in their place.
Amos Oz
Image
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
Image
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
Image
All my novels are rooted in their time and in their place. The place of my novels is Israel, almost without exception. Almost without exception, my novels are rooted in Israel because that's the place I know well. And, that's my gutsy advice to any young writer: write only about what you know well. Don't write about that which you don't know.
Amos Oz
Image
Universally, not only in Israel, people want to feel good about themselves. We all want to feel good to some extent.
Amos Oz
Image
Literature is about telling stories.
Amos Oz
Image
The [political] left are people with an imagination and the right are those without an imagination.
Amos Oz
Image
Never cut loose from your longings.
Amos Oz
Image
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