Quotes from Amos Oz

Judaism and Christianity, and Islam too, all drip honeyed words of love and mercy so long as they do not have access to handcuffs, grills, dominion, torture chambers, and gallows. All these faiths, including those that have appeared in recent generations and continue to mesmerize adherents to this day, all arose to save us and all just as soon started to shed our blood.

The real tragedy of humankind,' Shealtiel used to say, 'is not that the persecuted and enslaved crave to be liberated and to hold their heads high. No. The worst thing is that the enslaved secretly dream of enslaving their enslavers. The persecuted yearn to be persecutors. The slaves dream of being masters. As in the book of Esther.

Almost everyone traverses their lifespan, from birth to death, with eyes closed. Even you and I, my dear Shmuel. With eyes closed. If we open our eyes for just a moment, a great and terrible cry will burst forth from us and we shall scream and never stop. And if we don't cry out day and night, that's a sign that our eyes are closed.

He had the feeling that he must make a decision, and though he was used to making many decisions every day, this time he was beset with uncertainty; in fact he had no idea what was being asked of him

The very word 'disappears' implies that the universe is, so to speak, finite, and that it is possible to leave it. But no-o-othing" (he deliberately drew the word out) "can ever leave the universe. And nothing can enter it. Not a single speck of dust can appear or disappear. Matter is transformed into energy, and energy into matter

everything, every speck of dust, every drop of water continue to exist eternally, albeit in different forms, except for my soul?

On my parents' scale of values, the more Western something was, the more cultured it was considered.

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.

Israel should aspire to be a decent country. That's good enough for me.

In my vocabulary, the word "compromise" is synonymous to the word "life".

There is a difference between myself and some of the peace people in Europe: whereas they think that the ultimate evil in the world is war, I think the ultimate evil in the world is aggression, and aggression sometimes must be repelled by force.

The opposite of compromise is fanaticism and death.

When you're on the battlefield, you switch off your soul; otherwise, you would die of terror - you would die of fear. You switch off your soul, and you act like an animal or a machine.

We have to carry through to the next day and hope that we will be okay tomorrow as we are today and in the meantime, enjoy life.

In a short story by Chekhov or a novel by Balzac he found mysteries which, so far as he was aware, did not exist in any spy thriller. 35

once you have lifted your foot, do not be in a hurry to put it down again: who can tell what menacing nest of vipers you might step on.

Closing your eyes to the cruelty of life is, in my opinion, both stupid and sinful. There's very little we can do about it. So we have to at least acknowledge it.

We could talk about totally different things. Like the seasons of the year, for example, or even the star-filled sky of these summer nights: I'm interested in stars and nebulas. Maybe you are, too?

But there's also an upside-down sort of happiness, a black happiness, that comes from doing evil to others.

And so I learnt the secret of diversity. Life is made up of different avenues. Everything can happen in one of several ways, according to different musical scores and parallel logics. Each of these parallel logics is consistent and coherent in its own terms, perfect in itself, indifferent to all the others. In

Papa used to say that wealth is a sin and poverty is a punishment but that God apparently wants there to be no connection between the sin and the punishment. One man sins and another is punished. That's how the world is made.

The day life appeared on Earth, death appeared with it.

And in fact that selfsame strange urge I had when I was small - the desire to grant a second chance to something that could never have one - is still one of the urges that set me going today whenever I sit down to write a story.

Precisamos de um senso de justiça, mas precisamos também de senso comum, de imaginação, de uma capacidade profunda de imaginar o outro, às vezes de nos colocarmos na pele do outro. Precisamos da capacidade racional de nos comprometer e, às vezes, de fazer sacrifícios e concessões. p. 53