Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
A long war is degenerating - it ruins the mind and the soul and psyche of individuals and nations.
On my parents scale of values, the more Western something was, the more cultured it was considered.
The [political] left are people with an imagination and the right are those without an imagination.
On my parents' scale of values, the more Western something was, the more cultured it was considered.
Fundamentalist s live life with an exclamation point. I prefer to live my life with a question mark.
The Old Testament is full of poetry, prophecies, chronicles, documentations, storytelling, fairytales.
Literature is not made of ideas and it's not made of concepts, of psychological analysis. It's made of words.
When people have peace, they hate it and long for excitement, and when they have excitement, they want peace.
All you can see, if you look through the window - everything you see is a fulfillment of dreams, different dreams.
There are certain concepts, which exist in english, and are unthinkable, untranslatable into Hebrew and vice versa.
Universally, not only in Israel, people want to feel good about themselves. We all want to feel good to some extent.
I don't think a decent person has to choose between being pro-Israel and pro-Palestine. I think you have to be pro-Peace.
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.
I write about reconciliation, but not as a miracle, as a slow, gradual process of mutual discovery - discovering one another.
Almost every modern literary form existed in Hebrew two thousand years ago. And, yes, it existed even during the middle ages.
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.
The gift of literature is that, in some lucky cases, reading a novel or a story makes the reader more curious, more open-minded.
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.
Over 70 years after Hitler, a German chancellor, a woman, is the leader of the free world. So don't talk to me about irrevocable.
Trump is many things. He is pampered. He is an immature man. He is a teenager craving unconditional, endless love from everybody.
The only way to keep a dream, any dream at all, to keep a dream perfect and rosy and intact and unsullied is never to live it out.
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.
I often write about reconciling. Reconciling, or maybe half-reconciling between antagonists, between people who are deadly enemies.
Israel has obviously not liberated the Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank. We have occupied them, but we have not liberated them.
The battlefield is first and foremost horrible stenches, not sights, not sounds, but stenches. They don't travel well into literature.
My dream for Israel is peace, external and internal peace. I want Israel to live in peace with its neighbors and in peace with itself.
My parents - they tried to become American, they tried to become British, they tried to become Scandinavian - nobody wanted them, anywhere.
The opposite of compromise is not integrity. The opposite of compromise is not idealism. The opposite of compromise is fanaticism and death.
In fact, every one of us - every nation, every individual begins hundreds, perhaps thousands of years prior to the date that appears in the passport.
One of the things I wanted to introduce in The Same Sea beyond transcending the conflict, is the fact that deep down below all our secrets are the same.
I have seen for the first time in 100 years of conflict, the two peoples - the Israeli people and the Palestinian people - are ahead of their leaderships.
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.
Throughout my childhood, a heavy cloud of pain and disappointment and insecurity hovered over my home, my little street, my neighborhood, Jewish Jerusalem, Jewish Israel.
Writing in modern Hebrew is a bit like playing chamber music inside a huge, empty cathedral. If you are not very careful with the echoes, you may evoke some monstrosities.
But for 30 years, Orthodox leaders have tipped the balance between hawks and doves, and have been in a position to determine who forms a coalition and who runs the country.
This bloody conflict has been going on for much too long. It is doing terrible things to Israelis, to Palestinians. One of the terrible things it is causing is indifference.
Words create conceptions and self-conceptions and ultimately nations. They can start and stop wars. They can would and heal. Choosing words carefully is a moral responsibility.
Happiness as a human condition is something I never believed in. I think there are moments of happiness. I don't think there is a lasting happiness. I think this is unthinkable.
Every single pleasure I can imagine or have experienced is more delightful, more of a pleasure, if you take it in small sips, if you take your time. Reading is not an exception.
I was born in a tiny little enclave of terrified Jewish refugees, less than half a million of them, with no clear perspective of a future - hopes, yes, but no clear perspective.
I wrote The Same Sea not as a political allegory about Israelis and Palestinians. I wrote it about something much more gutsy and immediate. I wrote it as a piece of chamber music.
There is a document in every novel in the world. Even in the most fantastic novel, even in science fiction, there is a documentary side. But, this side is not the crux of the matter.
The English language took in many many fertilizations, many many genes, from other languages, from foreign languages - Latin, French, Nordic languages, German, Scandinavian languages.
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.
If people are pro-Israel, they are pro-Israel one-hundred-and-twenty percent. If they are anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian, they tend to be pro-Palestinian one-hundred-and-twenty percent.
My dream is much more modest than the dreams of the founding fathers. My dream is for Israel to live in peace with its neighbors and at peace with itself. This will be sufficient for me.
We all begin much much much earlier. In fact, every one of us - every nation, every individual begins hundreds, perhaps thousands of years prior to the date that appears in the passport.
Writing a poem is like having an affair, a one-night stand; a short story is a romance, a relationship; a novel is a marriage-one has to be cunning, devise compromises, and make sacrifices.
The very same book, even if it is translated very accurately, let's say from Hebrew into English or from English into Hebrew, becomes a different book because language is a musical instrument.
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.