Amos Oz
Amos Oz
Amos Ozis an Israeli writer, novelist, journalist and intellectual. He is also a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba. He is regarded as Israel's most famous living author...
NationalityIsraeli
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth4 May 1939
CountryIsrael
dream different window
All you can see, if you look through the window - everything you see is a fulfillment of dreams, different dreams.
hebrew unthinkable
There are certain concepts, which exist in english, and are unthinkable, untranslatable into Hebrew and vice versa.
literature language
Literature belongs first and foremost to the language in which it is being written.
compromise idealist believer
I'm a great believer in compromise. I know it's not popular among young idealists.
brother writing character
The reconciliation is not based on the fact that one of the characters opens his eyes and says, "O brother! O sister! How terrible I was! How right and wonderful you were! Please forgive me! Let's hug and love each other from now until the rest of eternity!" This is not the kind of reconciliation I write about; I write about sad, sober, sometimes heart-breaking compromises.
writing miracle mutual
I write about reconciliation, but not as a miracle, as a slow, gradual process of mutual discovery - discovering one another.
writing people enemy
I often write about reconciling. Reconciling, or maybe half-reconciling between antagonists, between people who are deadly enemies.
moving people sometimes
I follow the way people change. I follow the way people, who are very antagonized to one another become very close to one another and vice-versa. Sometimes I follow the way people who are intimately close to each other move apart. This is my business as a novelist. It is not about positions and ideas.
writing novel listen-to-me
When I need to take a side, I write a newspaper article and I tell my government, "You should not do that, you should do this." They don't listen to me, but I've been doing this for sixty years now. But, when I write a novel, I am not in that business.
writing giving perspective
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.
black-and-white simple tragedy
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.
character jew israeli
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.
thinking decent
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.
people
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.