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
small-town novel exception
The place of my novels is Israel, almost without exception. All of them take place in Israel - in Jerusalem, in the desert, in the kibbutz, in small towns, in villages.
fanaticism
I know one or two things about fanaticism and death, and I reject them.
inspired hebrew language
Hebrew is deeply inspired by other languages.
hebrew unthinkable
There are certain concepts, which exist in english, and are unthinkable, untranslatable into Hebrew and vice versa.
being-real birth
No human being really begins on the day which appears in the passport as their date of birth. We all begin much much much earlier.
integrity compromise idealism
The opposite of compromise is not integrity. The opposite of compromise is not idealism. The opposite of compromise is fanaticism and death.
black-and-white world palestine
In my essays and articles 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.
parent legacy culture
Of course, we carry inside of ourselves our parents. Even when they are dead, we carry them inside ourselves. And they are carrying inside themselves their dead parents and so on and so forth. There is a legacy of language and culture and religion.
fanaticism far headlines militancy novel people precisely
But The Same Sea is set precisely in this Israel, which never makes it to the news headlines anywhere. It is a novel about everyday people far removed from fundamentalism, fanaticism nationalism, or militancy of any sort.
tragedy definitions clash
Well, my definition of a tragedy is a clash between right and right.
loneliness self hands
… that sour blend of loneliness and lust for recognition, shyness and extravagance, deep insecurity and self-intoxicated egomania, that drives poets and writers out of their rooms to seek each other out, to rub shoulders with one another, bully, joke, condescend, feel each other, lay a hand on a shoulder or an arm round a waist, to chat and argue with little nudges, to spy a little, sniff out what is cooking in other pots, flatter, disagree, collude, be right, take offence, apologise, make amends, avoid each other, and seek each other’s company again.
tiny born lows
I was born and bred in a tiny, low-ceilinged ground-floor apartment.
traitor ifs diets
If you change your diet, someone will call you a traitor.
parent scales western
On my parents scale of values, the more Western something was, the more cultured it was considered.