Amos Oz Quotes

I want people to have a good impression of Israel. I don't feel like I'm an ambassador for my country, but I do talk about Israel a lot - I enjoy telling people about where I come from and my religion.

I had never met an Israeli before.

People have this kind of different image of what Israel is and what it's about. And yes, there are military people all over, but there's so much more.

It is another face in the new atmosphere of many leaders inside Israel. No doubt it is something new. Actually, Ezer Weizman is a Palestinian. He was born in Haifa.

Amos Oz is one of the finest novelists of this entire period. MY MICHAEL is a beautiful work of great depth and in some indescribable way lingers in the mind as a lyric song to his country's people as much as a moving love story.

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.

I'm no more or less Jewish than any other Jew. Israel has survived because we haven't forgot our Judaism, but there are some Israelis who did forget.

I am a proud Zionist. I can tell you about every blossom that grows in this land. I know the history and the Bible.

Wherever a writer grew up, they're obviously influenced by that area, and I'm sure their characters are pulled from those experiences.

I think plays, like books, are endemic. They grow out of the soil of the writer and the place he's writing about. I think, you just can't move them about, you know.

Identifying Israel with Jewry obscures the existence of the small but important post-Zionist movement in Israel, including the philosophers Adi Ophir and Anat Biletzki, the sociologist Uri Ram, the professor of theatre Avraham Oz and the poet Yitzhak Laor.

My usual trick with the Irish plays is to set things on islands I've never been to.

I think that life in Israel is sometimes bigger than the movies.

I think I'd really like to live in Israel. Even for someone like myself who is not that into religion, you go to Israel, and it's breathtaking in a lot of ways.

[I] had very high hopes for Israel and it's lived up to and surpassed what I had in mind... I've had such an eye-opening experience - a really nice glimpse into the culture and lives of Israelis and the Jewish people.

There's a phrase you hear in Israel: "We're not Jews, we're Israelis." What that means is that the stereotype we're familiar with here in the States of the Diaspora Jew, i.e. Jews in America or Europe or Russia, etc. does not fit at all with the reality of the homegrown "sabras" of Israel.

However you disguise novels, they are always biographies.

All my novels are rooted in their time and in their place. The place of my novels is Israel, almost without exception. Almost without exception, my novels are rooted in Israel because that's the place I know well. And, that's my gutsy advice to any young writer: write only about what you know well. Don't write about that which you don't know.

I love that country [Israel].

We regard it as our duty to declare that Jewish Jerusalem is an organic and inseparable part of the State of Israel, as it is an inseparable part of the history of Israel, of the faith of Israel.

Israel is a democratic state with an independent judiciary, a free press and a diverse population of many cultures, religions and creeds.

I love meeting Israeli people. They look at me like a son

I don't think you can get an idea of what Israel is like until you get here. People don't realize what a great place it is.

Big efforts should be made to integrate Israel's Arab citizens into the fabric of the Israeli society and the Israeli economy. That's really the key to any further progress to do with the Palestinians beyond Israel's borders.

Israel is a fulfilled dream. Nothing that exists here existed here a hundred years ago.