Democracy in many parts of the world is undergoing a very deep crisis. Politics is becoming a branch of the entertainment industry. People vote not for the best leader, but for the funniest candidate. Amos Oz More Quotes by Amos Oz More Quotes From Amos Oz I write in words. And my words are Hebrew words. Amos Oz hebrew writing I write in words. I don't write in sounds or in shapes or in flavors. Amos Oz flavor shapes writing My musical instrument is Hebrew and, to me, this is the most important fact about my writing. Amos Oz musical important writing Every language has influences and is an influence. Amos Oz influence language The English language took in many many fertilizations, many many genes, from other languages, from foreign languages - Latin, French, Nordic languages, German, Scandinavian languages. Amos Oz nordic language latin Not now, for the last three thousand years, Hebrew has been penetrated and fertilized by ancient Semitic languages - by Aramaic, by Greek, by Latin, by Arabic, by Yiddish, by Latino, by German, by Russian, by English, I could go on and on. It's very much like English. Amos Oz greek latin years Things can be translated, but they become different. Amos Oz different Hebrew has a system of tenses, which is, in a big way, different from the English system of tenses, probably different than any European system of tenses, which means a different sense of reality, which means a different concept of time. Amos Oz mean reality way In the same way in which music is made of notes and a painting is made of lines of colors, the matter of literature are words. Amos Oz lines color literature 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. Amos Oz passports being-real birth I don't write novels about expeditions to the planet Mars because I haven't been there and I don't know anything about it. Amos Oz mars planets writing Don't write about that which you don't know. Amos Oz knows writing 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. Amos Oz lava volcanoes thinking 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. Amos Oz hebrew two thinking My dream for Israel is peace, external and internal peace. Amos Oz internal-peace israel dream The morning I woke up and it was announced that Trump was the elected president of the United States, I wrote to Angela Merkel. I said that she - at least for me - is now the leader of the free world. Amos Oz leader president morning The far right is saying to us: Forget about the two-state solution, it is going to be a Jewish state from the coast to Jordan. The left wing says you have to forget about Jewish self-determination, you will have to live as a minority in an Arab state - just like the whites in South Africa. The key word that both have in mind is that the situation in the West Bank is "irrevocable." It is one of the words I dislike the most. Amos Oz keys determination self We supporters of the two-state solution in Israel and Palestine are now under a fierce attack from the far right and from the far left in Israel and in Europe. If I were a paranoid, I would say that maybe the far left and the far right are coordinating a conspiracy. Amos Oz israel europe two Israel is imperfect, of course it is - a far cry from the monumental dreams of the founding fathers. One of the reasons is that their dreams were unrealistic. They were bigger than life. These were messianic dreams, dreams about total redemption for the Jews, for the world. Such dreams do not come true, not in their entirety. Amos Oz israel dream father That's my gutsy advice to any young writer: write only about what you know well. Amos Oz young-writers writing advice
