Quotes from Amos Oz

Fanatics tend to live in a black-and-white world, with a simplistic view of good against evil. The fanatic is in fact a person who can only count to one. Yet at the same time, and without any contradiction, the fanatic almost always basks in some sort of bittersweet sentimentalism, composed of a mixture of fury and self-pity.

And yet, had it not been for Judas, there might not have been a crucifixion, and had there been no crucifixion, there would have been no Christianity.

Il compromesso è considerato come una mancanza di integrità, di dirittura morale, di consistenza, di onestà. Il compromesso puzza, è disonesto. Non nel mio vocabolario. Nel mio mondo, la parola compromesso è sinonimo di vita. E dove c'è vita ci sono compromessi. Il contrario di compromesso non è integrità e nemmeno idealismo e nemmeno determinazione o devozione. Il contrario di compromesso è fanatismo.

La vérité est que chacun d'entre nous sait parfaitement ce que signifie la pitié et quel en est le mode d'emploi : nous l'avons tous implorée un jour ou l'autre. Mais au moment où il nous faut ouvrir la porte de la miséricorde, nous faisons comme si nous en avions perdu la clé, comme si avoir un peu de coeur revenait à humilier son prochain ou à manifester une sensiblerie démodée. (p.283)

Toate sentimentele mi se par inutile, f?cînd ca lucrurile s? se termine r?u. ViaÈ›a poate fi mult mai simpl? dac? abolim emomÈ›iile. Dar nu trebuie s? te educ, Shmuel. Poate te mulÈ›umeÈ™ti cu faptul c?, în general, te tolerez într-o m?sur? mai mare sau mai mic?, iar din cînd în cînd apar È™i momente ceva mai bune decît acesta.

Self-sacrifice can sometimes be a well-honed weapon that the fanatic wields for destructive emotional purposes. Moreover, those who are eager to sacrifice themselves will not find it difficult to sacrifice others.

Feiten zijn volgens mij vaak de ergste vijanden van de waarheid.

He reflects that Chekhov has already mapped out the route by which one can approach a strange lady by paying court to her lapdog.

If you steal from one book you are condemned as a plagiarist, but if you steal from ten books you are considered a scholar, and if you steal from thirty or forty books, a distinguished scholar.') On

All our tongues and cultures are constant shoplifters from other tongues and cultures.

Memory deludes me. I have just remembered something that I completely forgot after it happened. I remembered it again when I was about sixteen, and then I forgot it again. And this morning I remembered not the event itself but the previous recollection, which itself was more than forty years ago, as though an old moon were reflected in a windowpane from which it was reflected in a lake, from where memory draws not the reflection itself, which no longer exists, but only its whitened bones.

Por lo que leía en los libros fue llegando a la sencilla conclusión de que la mayoría de las personas necesitan más cariño del que se puede encontrar.

Možda je samo smrt ''nepovratna'', a i to ?u jednog dana ispitati sasvim izbliza i intimno.

Se dijo que todo lo que a él le parecía importante no lo era realmente y que en todo lo que realmente era importante no tenía tiempo de pensar. La vida pasaba sin reflexionar apenas sobre las cosas sencillas y grandes, la soledad, la nostalgia, el deseo y la muerte.

The Gentiles used to say about us: the diploma—that's the Jews' religion. Not money, not gold. The diploma.

Deja de compadecerte de ti mismo. La compasión escasea mucho en el mundo y es una lástima desperdiciarla. Dicho

only until the children are born. Your life is your own only for a short time:

Anyone willing to change," Shmuel said, "will always be considered a traitor by those who cannot change and are scared to death of change and don't understand it and loathe change.

A man who has the ability to generate a new word and to inject it into the bloodstream of the language seems to me only a little lower than the Creator of light and darkness. If you write a book, you may be fortunate enough to be read for a while, until other, better books come along and take its place; but to produce a new word is to approach immortality.

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

Often the psyche is the worst enemy of the body: it doesn't let the body live, it doesn't let it enjoy itself when it wants to or get the rest it is begging for. If only we could extract it the way we extract the tonsils or the appendix, we would all live healthy and contended lives till we were a thousand years old.

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.

We are all Judas. Even eighty generations later we are still Judas.

Even after she disappeared, it did not settle at once, but continued to make waves and produced a trickling, rustling sound that Shmuel hoped would not die away too soon.