Amos Oz Quotes

Write about what you know, that's what I say.

I would have every man write what he knows and no more.

Know what you're talking about.

Never write on a subject until you have read yourself full of it.

Truth, also is the pursuit of it.

Session musicians kind of respected me because what I was talking about made sense. That all came from an education. Believe me, education does you more good. Maybe that's the reason I've been around so long.

Science is about nothing but getting at the truth, and anything that gets in the way of that diminishes, in my experience, the science.

Books are only the shadow and life the real thing. I believe this as strongly as any belief I hold.

I'd just make sure with anything I say I know what I'm talking about.

True information does good.

The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.

Knowledge is ancient error reflecting on its youth.

Truth: An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance …

… he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false, is guilty of falsehood; and the accidental truth of the assertion, does not justify or excuse him.

When truth and error have fair play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter.

People can tell if you don't know what you're talking about.

I don't want to tell people what to think. I'm the least qualified person in the world for that. If I'd go around pretending to be the expert on everything, I'd become Dan Brown, and I don't understand that. We all do our research if we're good writers, and we all work hard to get it right, but that doesn't mean we're experts in the field. The best we can do is challenge people to learn the facts themselves.

I don't know anything and neither do you.

You don't have to tell everything you know, but let what you do say be the truth as you understand it.

I tell the truth. And I know what I'm talking about. That's why I'm a threat.

Not to know is the beginning of wisdom.

A novelist has to know enough about a subject to fool the passenger next to him on an airplane.

If I'm reading something I happen to know and gets it wrong, I just don't trust the book any more. What I ask of a novel I'm reading is that it should know a fraction more about the things I know than I do. When I'm writing...I ask myself: would I be convinced by this if I read it? If I knocked against this bit of scenery, would it feel solid?

When I look at what a writer owes to the reader, it's critical to know that everything you're writing about is not made up in your head. I feel that unless you can document and be certain about what it is that you're writing about, the reader is going to lose faith in your own integrity.

I wouldn't write about sh*t I don't know. You won't hear me write about politics in Africa and stuff, because I don't know enough about it. And I would never rap about something I can't back up.