Quotes from Amos Oz

Digo que la semilla del fanatismo siempre brota al adoptar una actitud de superioridad moral que impide llegar a un acuerdo.

Do you know what the main thing is—the thing a woman should look for in her man? She should look for a quality that's not at all exciting but that's rarer than gold: decency. And maybe kindness too. Today, you should know this, I rate decency more highly than kindness. Decency is the bread, kindness is the butter. Or the honey.

Remember this well from now on: 'I want' and 'I don't want' aren't reasons, they can only be defined as self-indulgence.

The world is full of men who are attracted to women but aren't really interested in them. Weak women sometimes give in to men like that. As it happens, I don't need a man. I live alone. I work, I read books, and I listen to music. Sometimes I have a visitor in the evening. Sometimes on another evening I have a different visitor. They come and they go. I'm self-sufficient.

just to break the silence. He always imagined that silence was somehow directed against him. Or that it was his fault.

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 on its own terms, perfect in itself, indifferent to all the others.

lived. But his disciples were not dreamers. They were hungry for power, and in the end, like all those who hunger for power, they became shedders of blood.

Justice without compassion isn't justice; it's an abattoir.

Clopotele bisericilor si ale manastirilor au inceput acum sa bata, de departe si de aproape, dar si ele sunt undeva, inauntrul tacerii.

Cat de mult seamana viata din zilele noastre cu un bal mizerabil: un pic de lumina, un pic de muzica, putin dans, apoi intuneric. Priveste. Luminile au fost deja stinse, resturile de mancare au fost deja aruncate cainilor.

Remember this well from now on: 'I want' and 'I don't want' aren't reasons, they can only be defined as self-indulgence.

remember the vertiginous sense of time within time within time, and the whole host of heaven trying on, blending, and hurting the innumerable hues of light just after the sun has set

Maybe they feared that a knowledge of languages would expose me too to the blandishments of Europe, that wonderful, murderous continent.

Literature and gossip are closely related. People who are curious and imaginative long to know 'what it's like for other people.' This longing can be satisfied in its basest, most banal form through gossip, just as it can attain a more refined and complex gratification in art. Both gossip and literature, each in its own way, are capable of offering a partial antidote to fanaticism, because they both relish the fascinating differences between people.

All worlds are whores, forever betraying you and slipping away into the darkness while your soul years for them.

Traición no es lo contrario de amor; es una de sus opciones. Traidor –creo– es quien cambia a ojos de aquellos que no pueden cambiar y no cambiarán, aquellos que odian cambiar y no pueden concebir el cambio, a pesar de que siempre quieran cambiarle a uno. En otras palabras, traidor, a ojos del fanático, es cualquiera que cambia. Y es dura la elección entre convertirse en un fanático o convertirse en un traidor.

Of course you can't understand. All you can do is destroy a village without knowing anything about its people or its history, without wanting to know. Just like that. Like a mad bull. Of course you don't understand. What do you understand? Fucking and killing, that's what you understand. And soccer. And shares in the bus cooperative. You're a wild animal, not a human being. A wild, stupid, animal.

Agnon himself was an observant Jew who kept the Sabbath and wore a skullcap; he was, literally, a God-fearing man: in Hebrew, fear and faith are synonyms. There are corners in Agnon's stories where, in an indirect, cleverly camouflaged way, the fear of God is portrayed as a terrible dread of God: Agnon believes in God and fears him, but he does not love him.

Muy a menudo, el fanático sólo puede contar hasta uno, ya que dos es un número demasiado grande para él o ella. Al mismo tiempo, descubriremos que, a menudo, los fanáticos son sentimentales sin remedio.

I wanted to go free, to be liberated once and for all from these two enemies, the body and the soul. I wanted to be a cloud. To be a stone on the surface of the moon.

Begreppet 'lycklig i alla sina dagar', illusionen om bestående lycka, är i själva verket en oxymoron. Antingen konstant lycka eller klimax. Evig lycka är inte någon lycka, på samma sätt som evig orgasm inte alls är någon orgasm.

Verzeih mir, guter Freund, dass ich dir einen so langen Brief schreibe, ich hab gerade nicht die Zeit für einen kurzen.

Contending with fanaticism does not mean destroying all fanatics, but rather cautiously handling the little fanatic who hides, more or less, inside each of our souls. It also means ridiculing, just a little, our own convictions; being curious; and trying to take a peek, from time to time, not only through our neighbor's window but, more important, at the reality viewed from that window, which will necessarily be different from the one seen through our own.

Y nos han acostumbrado a no alegrarnos de lo que tenemos, sino a alegrarnos única y exclusivamente de lo que poseemos nosotros y no tienen los demás. Y aún peor, nos han acostumbrado desde pequeños a mantener todo tipo de ideas venenosas que empiezan siempre por las palabras