Quote

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

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
Fact
Words
Write
Flavors
Important
Hebrew
Writing
Instrument
Sounds
Musical
Shapes

More quotes by Amos Oz

Image
All you can see, if you look through the window - everything you see is a fulfillment of dreams, different dreams.
Amos Oz
Image
In writing a novel, the writer must be able to identify emotionally and intellectually with two or three or four contradicting perspectives and give each of them very a convincing voice. It's like playing tennis with yourself and you have to be on both sides of the yard. You have to be on both sides, or all sides if there are more than two sides.
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
The actual gap between Labor, Likud and the new central party is microscopic.
Amos Oz
Image
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
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
Out there, in the world, all the walls were covered with graffiti: Yids, go back to Palestine, so we came back to Palestine, and now the worldatlarge shouts at us: Yids, get out of Palestine.
Amos Oz
Image
Every language has influences and is an influence.
Amos Oz
Image
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
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
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
Image
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
Image
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
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
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
It is crystal clear to me that if Arabs put down a draft resolution blaming Israel for the recent earthquake in Iran it would probably have a majority, the U.S. would veto it and Britain and France would abstain.
Amos Oz
Image
She had not wanted him to but had let him have his way because ever since she was a child she had generally yielded before anyone with strong willpower, especially if it was a man, not because she was naturally submissive, but because strong male willpower gave her a feeling of safety and trust, together with acceptance and a desire to give in.
Amos Oz
Image
Imagination needs food like every dog and every cat and every bird and every fish.
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