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Books Quotes by Amos Oz

44 Books quotes by Amos Oz

All Books quotes Amos Oz’s page

Literature is about telling stories, and the quotes say it can spark curiosity. The writer talks about juggling several opposing viewpoints inside a novel. A humorous line compares a short story to a romance and a novel to a marriage, showing how different forms feel.

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All of my novels are democracies.

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I recommend the art of slow reading.

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Literature exists inside the language. It's made of words.

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Literature is about telling stories.

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All my novels are rooted in their time and in their place.

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“The best way to know the soul of another country is to read its literature.”

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You know, gynecology has a role; sex is a gift. And literature is not about sending messages.

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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…

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I prefer to talk about the gift of literature rather than its role or task.

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The gift of literature is that, in some lucky cases, reading a novel or a story makes the reader more curious, more…

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I'm not sure I'm happy with words such as "task" or "role" when they are attached to literature.

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Literature is not made of ideas and it's not made of concepts, of psychological analysis. It's made of words.

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I don't write novels about expeditions to the planet Mars because I haven't been there and I don't know anything about it.

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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,…

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I would not waste five years of my life in order to send to the Israeli readers a simple message such as,…

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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…

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Literature is about telling stories. Now, the gift of literature is that, in some lucky cases, reading a novel or a story…

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Writing a poem is like having an affair, a one-night stand; a short story is a romance, a relationship; a novel is…

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I wrote a novel about Israelis who live their own lives on the slope of a volcano. Near a volcano one still…

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There is a document in every novel in the world. Even in the most fantastic novel, even in science fiction, there is…

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I know that a translation of a work of literature is like playing a violin concerto on the piano. You can do…

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D.H. Lawrence, I think, defined the difference between writing an article and writing a novel very well. He said, in writing a…

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Literature is always about bygone times. It's always looking back in time with a certain perspective. I look at bygone life which…

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I'm not sure I'm happy with words such as "task" or "role" when they are attached to literature. I prefer to talk…

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Literature belongs first and foremost to the language in which it is being written. The very same book, even if it is…

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In writing a novel, the writer must be able to identify emotionally and intellectually with two or three or four contradicting perspectives…

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There is a document in every novel in the world. Even in the most fantastic novel, even in science fiction, there is…

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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…

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Literature exists inside the language. It's made of words. It's not made of ideas and it's not made of concepts, of psychological…

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“I could imagine his sorrow. My father had a sensual relationship with his books. He loved feeling them, stroking them, sniffing them.…

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Of course my books are translated into many languages. I have here, in my home, translations on my shelf of my books…

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Literature may open a third eye in the middle of the reader's forehead.

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Literature belongs first and foremost to the language in which it is being written.

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Almost without exception, my novels are rooted in Israel because that's the place I know well.

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“In a short story by Chekhov or a novel by Balzac he found mysteries which, so far as he was aware, did…

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When I say my novels are set in Israel in the last seventy years, this entails the fact that they begin hundreds…

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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.

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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…

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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,…

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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…

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More by Amos Oz

I find the family the most mysterious and fascinating institution in the world.

“All the profits that Papa made by the sweat of his brow from his mill she extorted from him and spent the lot on…

Nobody ever predicted, a week before President Sadat came to Jerusalem in 1977, that his arrival would be the beginning of a peace process…

Every country in the world should follow the example of President Trump and move the embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. But simultaneously, there should…

Actually, who hasn't been through the ghastly experience of sitting in front of a blank page, with its toothless mouth grinning at you: Go…

I think loathing begets fanaticism, and in the end, loathing begets hatred and violence.

Literature is about telling stories. Now, the gift of literature is that, in some lucky cases, reading a novel or a story makes the…

Very often, fanaticism begins at home. It begins inside the family. It begins with the urge to change our kin, to change our beloved…

When I need to take a side, I write a newspaper article and I tell my government, "You should not do that, you should…

We have to carry through to the next day and hope that we will be okay tomorrow as we are today and in the…

Trump is many things. He is pampered. He is an immature man. He is a teenager craving unconditional, endless love from everybody.

The only way to keep a dream, any dream at all, to keep a dream perfect and rosy and intact and unsullied is never…

“Judaism and Christianity, and Islam too, all drip honeyed words of love and mercy so long as they do not have access to handcuffs,…

Never cut loose from your longings.

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. I don't…