Yehuda Amichai Quotes

Where the light is, and each thing clear,Separate from all others, standing in its place,I drink the time and touch whatever's near,And hope for day when the whole world has that face:For what assures her present every year?In dark accidents the mind's sufficient grace.

We live between the act of awakening and the act of surrender. Each morning, we awaken to the light and the invitation to a new day in the world of time; each night, we surrender to the dark to be taken to play in the world of dreams where time is no more.

A man is a very small thing, and the night is very large and full of wonders.

Ten million years from now, when then sun burns out and the Earth is just a frozen iceball hurtling through space, nobody's going to care whether or not I got this guy out.

The years of anxious searching in the dark, with their intense longing, their alternations of confidence and exhaustion and the final emergence into the light -- only those who have experienced it can understand it.

My childhood years were a balance of dark and light.

The dark today leads into light tomorrow. There is no endless joy, and yet no endless sorrow.

That night was a dark day. Of course, all nights are dark days, because night is simply a badly lit version of day.

Watching him, I thought, not for the first time that night, that maybe it should have felt strange to be with him, here, now. And yet it didn’t, at all. That was one of the things about the night. Stuff that would be weird in the bright light of day just wasn’t so much once you passed a certain hour. It was like the dark just evened it all out somehow.

The dark does not destroy the light; it defines it. It's our fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows.

The only true time which a man can properly call his own, is that which he has all to himself; the rest, though in some sense he may be said to live it, is other people's time, not his.

I SEE thee better in the dark, I do not need a light. The love of thee a prism be Excelling violet. I see thee better for the years That hunch themselves between, The miner’s lamp sufficient be To nullify the mine. And in the grave I see thee best— Its little panels be A-glow, all ruddy with the light I held so high for thee! What need of day to those whose dark Hath so surpassing sun, It seem it be continually At the meridian?

I’ve always felt that night doesn’t fall. Night rises.

Rejoice that you have still have a long time to live, before the thought comes to you that there is nothing more in the world to see.

Several hours or several years make no difference once you have lost eternity.

Awareness is everything. Hallie once pointed out to me that people worry a lot more about the eternity *after* their deaths than the eternity that happened before they were born. But it's the same amount of infinity, rolling out in all directions from where we stand.

A writer loves the dark, loves it, but is always fumbling around in the light.

Four years and everything was the same, except me.

The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.

When we don't allow ourselves to hope, we don't allow ourselves to have purpose. Without purpose, without meaning, life is dark. We've no light within, and we're just living to die.

In the circle of light on the state in the midst of darkness, you have the sensation of being entirely alone... This is called solitude in public... During a performance, before an audience of thousands, you can always enclose yourself in this circle, like a snail in its shell... You can carry it wherever you go.

In a dream I walked with God through the deep places of creation; past walls that receded and gates that opened through hall after hall of silence, darkness and refreshment--the dwelling place of souls acquainted with light and warmth--until, around me, was an infinity into which we all flowed together and lived anew, like the rings made by raindrops falling upon wide expanses of calm dark waters.

However dark the night, however dim our hopes, the light will always follow darkness.