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
literature not-sure
I'm not sure I'm happy with words such as "task" or "role" when they are attached to literature.
thinking people compromise
Compromise is not popular. It's not at all popular among young people who these days call themselves "activists." They think compromises are dishonest, opportunistic, humiliating. Not in my vocabulary.
writing
I write in words. I don write in sounds or in shapes or in flavors.
writing hebrew
I write in words. And my words are Hebrew words.
fairytale old-testament storytelling
The Old Testament is full of poetry, prophecies, chronicles, documentations, storytelling, fairytales.
age hebrew modern
Almost every modern literary form existed in Hebrew two thousand years ago. And, yes, it existed even during the middle ages.
thinking common language
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.
thinking hebrew similarity
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.
dream
My dream for Israel is peace, external and internal peace.
neighbor
I want Israel to live in peace with its neighbors and in peace with itself.
dream fulfillment testimony
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.
dream perfect rosy
The only way to keep a dream, any dream at all, to keep a dream perfect and rosy and intact and unsullied is never to live it out.
dream country writing
The moment you carry out any of your dreams or your fantasies - travel around the world, climbing a high mountain, buying a new house, writing a novel, carrying out a sexual fantasy, traveling to an unknown country - the moment you carry out your dreams, it's always, by definition less perfect and rosy than it had been as a dream. This is the nature of dreams.
writing musical important
My musical instrument is Hebrew and, to me, this is the most important fact about my writing.