Quote

A little more than a hundred years ago, Tel Aviv was not a city. It was a title of a novel written by an author. The Return to Zion was a name of another novel. There was a bookshelf. There was no country. There was no state. There was no nation. There was no physical Jewish reality in this country.

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
Another
Return
Title
Reality
Novel
Titles
Littles
Cities
Jewish
States
Name
Author
Little
Written
Physical
Aviv
Country
Names
City
Bookshelf
Years
Nations
Hundred
Zion
State
Nation
Bookshelves

More quotes by Amos Oz

Image
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
Image
Literature is not made of ideas and it's not made of concepts, of psychological analysis. It's made of words.
Amos Oz
Image
I have been saying again and again that the case of Israel and Palestine, the case of Israel and the Arab world, and indeed the case of Israel and Europe, is not black and white. It's not a western movie.
Amos Oz
Image
The whole Zionist project was based on a whole spectrum of different and even conflicting dreams and visions.
Amos Oz
Image
Almost every modern literary form existed in Hebrew two thousand years ago. And, yes, it existed even during the middle ages.
Amos Oz
Image
My musical instrument is Hebrew and, to me, this is the most important fact about my writing.
Amos Oz
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Fundamentalist s live life with an exclamation point. I prefer to live my life with a question mark.
Amos Oz
Image
I wrote a novel about Israelis who live their own lives on the slope of a volcano. Near a volcano one still falls in love, one still gets jealous, one still wants a promotion, one still gossips.
Amos Oz
Image
Do not cut lose from your longings - for what are we without our longings?
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
I don't think a decent person has to choose between being pro-Israel and pro-Palestine. I think you have to be pro-Peace.
Amos Oz
Image
Dreams fulfilled are imperfect.
Amos Oz
Image
Hebrew is deeply inspired by other languages.
Amos Oz
Image
If people are pro-Israel, they are pro-Israel one-hundred-and-twenty percent. If they are anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian, they tend to be pro-Palestinian one-hundred-and-twenty percent.
Amos Oz
Image
All of my novels are democracies.
Amos Oz
Image
Democracy in many parts of the world is undergoing a very deep crisis. Politics is becoming a branch of the entertainment industry. People vote not for the best leader, but for the funniest candidate.
Amos Oz
Image
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
Image
The kibbutz way of life is not for everyone. It is meant for people who are not in the business of working harder than they should be working, in order to make more money than they need, in order to buy things they don't really want, in order to impress people they don't really like.
Amos Oz