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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

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I Think There Are

Amos Oz

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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.

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More From Amos Oz

The [political] Left Are People With An Imagination And The Right Are Those Without An Imagination.

When I Say My Novels Are Set In Israel In The Last Seventy Years, This Entails The Fact That They Begin Hundreds Or Thousands Of Years Earlier In Time. And, Sometimes In Very, Very Different Places, Because We All Come From Somewhere, Especially Here In Israel.

Black Box Is Not A Statement About Injustice Committed Against Sephardi Oriental Jews Or About The Extremism Of Religious Jews Or The Lack Of Imagination Of The Old Israeli Elites. It's A Human Story, In My View, First And Foremost About A Mystical Communion Between Enemies. This Is The Inner Story Of The Novel. This Is My Business As A Novelist. It Is Not About Positions And Ideas.

I Never Regard My Characters, My Protagonists, As Personifications. It's Not That I Sit By My Desk And I Pick Up A Character Who Will Be The Spokesperson Of The Israeli Left, Another One Will Be The Spokesperson Of The Right, Another One Will Be The Spokesperson Of Middle Eastern Jews, European Jews, Religions Jews And So On.

The Palestinians Have No Other Land. They Are Absolutely Right About This. The Israeli Jews Also Have No Other Land And They Are Absolutely Right About This. It Is A Tragedy Of Two Peoples Claiming The Same Very Small Country - Very Small, About The Size Of New Jersey. And Both Of Them Are Right. Both Of Them Have No Other Homeland As Peoples. As Individuals, Maybe, But Not As A People.

I'm Not Sure I'm Happy With Words Such As "task" Or "role" When They Are Attached To Literature.

I Often Write About Reconciling. Reconciling, Or Maybe Half-reconciling Between Antagonists, Between People Who Are Deadly Enemies. I Write About Reconciliation, But Not As A Miracle, As A Slow, Gradual Process Of Mutual Discovery - Discovering One Another. I Write About Sad, Sober, Sometimes Heart-breaking Compromises.

I Find The Family The Most Mysterious And Fascinating Institution In The World.

There Are Certain Concepts, Which Exist In English, And Are Unthinkable, Untranslatable Into Hebrew And Vice Versa. 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. So, Things Can Be Translated, But They Become Different.

It's Possible A Palestinian State Will Be Installed Over The Heads Of The Palestinians. It Could Be Part Of An Agreement Between The Israeli Government And Moderate Arab States, But Not One Between Israel And The Palestinians.

Dreams Fulfilled Are Imperfect.

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.

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.

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.

Recently With Is And Islamist Fanaticism, It Has Become Easy For The Israeli Government To Simply Push The Palestinian Struggle For Self-determination Into The Same Ranks As These Fundamentalist Movements.

I'm A Great Believer In Compromise. I Know It's Not Popular Among Young Idealists.

The Reconciliation Is Not Based On The Fact That One Of The Characters Opens His Eyes And Says, "o Brother! O Sister! How Terrible I Was! How Right And Wonderful You Were! Please Forgive Me! Let's Hug And Love Each Other From Now Until The Rest Of Eternity!" This Is Not The Kind Of Reconciliation I Write About; I Write About Sad, Sober, Sometimes Heart-breaking Compromises.

Literature Exists Inside The Language. It's Made Of Words. It's Not Made Of Ideas And It's Not Made Of Concepts, Of Psychological Analysis. It's Made Of Words. 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.

Hebrew Is Deeply Inspired By Other Languages.

Many Intellectuals In America And In Europe, They Are In The Habit Of Taking Sides: Who Are The Bad Guys? Who Are The Good Guys? They Launch A Demonstration Against The Bad Guys, Sign A Petition In Favor Of The Good Guys, And Going To Sleep Feeling Well About Themselves.

Of Course, We Carry Inside Of Ourselves Our Parents. Even When They Are Dead, We Carry Them Inside Ourselves. And They Are Carrying Inside Themselves Their Dead Parents And So On And So Forth. There Is A Legacy Of Language And Culture And Religion. In Some Cases, Family Stories Told By Grandparents To Little Grandchildren. When I Say My Novels Are Set In Israel In The Last Seventy Years, This Entails The Fact That They Begin Hundreds Or Thousands Of Years Earlier In Time. Everybody Comes From Somewhere.

The Actual Gap Between Labor, Likud And The New Central Party Is Microscopic.

Every Language Has Influences And Is An Influence.

Of Course, We Carry Inside Of Ourselves Our Parents. Even When They Are Dead, We Carry Them Inside Ourselves. And They Are Carrying Inside Themselves Their Dead Parents And So On And So Forth. There Is A Legacy Of Language And Culture And Religion.

All My Novels Are Rooted In Their Time And In Their Place.

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.

The Jews Have A Powerful Ally, America, But They Do Not Really Have A Bigger Family In The Same Way That There Is A European Family Or An Arab-muslim Family. People Who Fail To Understand This Ambivalence Will Never Understand This Country. They Will Not Be Able To Understand How Netanyahu Could Win The Last Election By Saying The Iranians Are Coming, Islamic State (is) Is Coming, The Arabs Are Coming, And The Whole World Hates Us Anyway.

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. I Don't Think A Novel's Main Donation, Main Gift, Is The Document. The Document Is There, But A Novel Goes Beyond Documentation. It Goes Into Opening A New Vista, Opening A New Perspective, Showing Familiar Things In An Unfamiliar Way.

I Would Not Waste Five Years Of My Life In Order To Send To The Israeli Readers A Simple Message Such As, "let Us Change A Policy Or Stop The Settlements," Or, "let Us Strive For Peace." This Is Not What It Is About.

I Don't Envy Netanyahu's Situation, Because I Think He Is In Hot Water. Obviously, This Man Has A Totally Different Sense Of Personal Morality Than Some Of Our Previous Political Leaders. What Would I Personally Like To See? I Would Like To See This Government Go Straight To Hell. And I Would Have Liked To Have Seen The Previous Government Go Straight To Hell.

I Was Born And Bred In A Tiny, Low-ceilinged Ground-floor Apartment.

Every Decent Man Had To Be Against Fascism, Period.

I Would Love To Leave My Children And Grandchildren A Nicer World Than The One I Am Going To Leave Them. But Bearing In Mind That I Was Born In The World Of Hitler, Mussolini And Franco, The Legacy I Leave Them Might Not Be As Terrible As The Legacy My Parents And Grandparents Left To Me.

The Whole Zionist Project Was Based On A Whole Spectrum Of Different And Even Conflicting Dreams And Visions.

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.

When I Need To Take A Side, I Write A Newspaper Article And I Tell My Government, "you Should Not Do That, You Should Do This." They Don't Listen To Me, But I've Been Doing This For Sixty Years Now. But, When I Write A Novel, I Am Not In That Business.

I Am An Old Man And I Have Seen Things Get Revoked. Things Which Looked Very Irrevocable.

I Don't Think Israelis Are Less Critical Of Corruption Than People In Italy, France Or America. Israel Is Special In A Different Way. There Is A Daytime Israel And A Nighttime Israel. The First Is Self-confident, Pushy And Passionate, Like Other Mediterranean Lands. It Is Hedonistic, Materialistic And Almost Arrogant. During The Nighttime, People Are Terrified, People Are Filled With Existential Dreads. These Fears Aren't Baseless.

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.

I Have Been Saying Again And Again That The Case Of Israel And Palestine, The Case Of Israel And The Arab World, And Indeed The Case Of Israel And Europe, Is Not Black And White. It's Not A Western Movie.

Black And White

Israel Of The Coastal Plain, Where Eight Out Of Ten Israeli Jews Live Far Removed From The Occupied Territories, From The Fiery Jerusalem, From The Religious And Nationalistic Conflicts, Is Unknown To The Outside World, Almost Unknown To Itself.

Different Musical Instruments Provide For Different Music.

Literature Is About Telling Stories.

Telling Stories

Never Cut Loose From Your Longings.

The Israeli-palestinian Conflict Is A Tragedy; It Is A Clash Between Right And Right. And, Therefore It's Not Black And White. Sometimes, Recently It Is Indeed A Clash Between Wrong And Wrong. It Is Not As Simple As Fascism Was.

Black And White

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.

Two Children Of Same Cruel Parent Look At One Another And See In Each Other The Image Of The Cruel Parent Or The Image Of Their Past Oppressor. This Is Very Much The Case Between Jew And Arab: It's A Conflict Between Two Victims.

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.

Israel Is A Fulfilled Dream. Nothing That Exists Here Existed Here A Hundred Years Ago.

Do Not Cut Lose From Your Longings - For What Are We Without Our Longings?

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.

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.

I Write About Reconciliation, But Not As A Miracle, As A Slow, Gradual Process Of Mutual Discovery - Discovering One Another.

I'm A Great Believer In Compromises. I Do Not Believe In Capitulation.

Actually, Who Hasn't Been Through The Ghastly Experience Of Sitting In Front Of A Blank Page, With Its Toothless Mouth Grinning At You: Go Ahead, Let's See You Lay A Finger On Me? A Blank Page Is Actually A Whitewashed Wall With No Door And No Window. Beginning To Tell A Story Is Like Making A Pass At A Total Stranger In A Restaurant.

We Lived Through A Relatively Golden Age Between The End Of World War Ii And Sept. 11, 2001.

That's My Gutsy Advice To Any Young Writer: Write Only About What You Know Well.

The Palestinians Are Not Going Anywhere - -they Have Nowhere To Go. The Israeli Jews Also Aren't Going Anywhere - They Have Nowhere To Go. But We Cannot Become One Happy Family, Because We Are Not. So, We Have To Divide The House Into Two Smaller Apartments And Learn How To Say, "good Morning" In The Hall Every Day. Eventually, Perhaps We Will Pop In On Each Other For A Cup Of Coffee. But We Need This Semi-detached House, A Two-family Unit.

My Musical Instrument Is Hebrew And, To Me, This Is The Most Important Fact About My Writing.

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.

The Battlefield Is First And Foremost Horrible Stenches, Not Sights, Not Sounds, But Stenches. They Don't Travel Well Into Literature.

The Moment You Carry Out Any Of Your Dreams Or Your Fantasies - Travel Around The World, Climbing A High Mountain, Buying A New House, Writing A Novel, Carrying Out A Sexual Fantasy, Traveling To An Unknown Country - The Moment You Carry Out Your Dreams, It's Always, By Definition Less Perfect And Rosy Than It Had Been As A Dream. This Is The Nature Of Dreams.

Israel Is A Fulfilled Dream. Nothing That Exists Here Existed Here A Hundred Years Ago. "the State Of The Jews" Was Not A Title Of A Country. It Was A Title Of A Futuristic Novel. A Little More Than A Hundred Years Ago, "tel Aviv" Was Not A City. It Was A Title Of Another Novel Written By The Same Author. The "return To Zion" Was A Name Of Another Novel. There Was A Bookshelf. There Was No State. There Was No Nation. All You Can See, If You Look Through The Window - Everything You See Is A Fulfillment Of Dreams, Different Dreams.

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.

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.

Israel Is A Fulfillment, And As A Fulfillment, It Is Flawed. Dreams Fulfilled Are Imperfect. And, 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.

On My Parents Scale Of Values, The More Western Something Was, The More Cultured It Was Considered.

Literature Is About Telling Stories. Now, The Gift Of Literature Is That, In Some Lucky Cases, Reading A Novel Or A Story Makes The Reader More Curious, More Open-minded. It May Open A Third Eye In The Middle Of The Reader's Forehead.

She Had Not Wanted Him To But Had Let Him Have His Way Because Ever Since She Was A Child She Had Generally Yielded Before Anyone With Strong Willpower, Especially If It Was A Man, Not Because She Was Naturally Submissive, But Because Strong Male Willpower Gave Her A Feeling Of Safety And Trust, Together With Acceptance And A Desire To Give In.

A Little More Than A Hundred Years Ago, "tel Aviv" Was Not A City. It Was A Title Of A Novel Written By An Author. The "return To Zion" Was A Name Of Another Novel. There Was A Bookshelf. There Was No Country. There Was No State. There Was No Nation. There Was No Physical Jewish Reality In This Country.

A Conflict Begins And Ends In The Hearts And Minds Of People, Not In The Hilltops.

D.h. Lawrence, I Think, Defined The Difference Between Writing An Article And Writing A Novel Very Well. He Said, In Writing A Novel, The Writer Must Be Able To Identify Emotionally And Intellectually With Two Or Three Or Four Contradicting Perspectives And Give Each Of Them Very A Convincing Voice. It's Like Playing Tennis With Yourself And You Have To Be On Both Sides Of The Yard. You Have To Be On Both Sides, Or All Sides If There Are More Than Two Sides.

All You Can See, If You Look Through The Window - Everything You See Is A Fulfillment Of Dreams, Different Dreams.

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.

I Know That A Translation Of A Work Of Literature Is Like Playing A Violin Concerto On The Piano. You Can Do This. You Can Do This Very Successfully On One Strict Condition: Never Try To Force The Piano To Produce The Sounds Of The Violin. This Will Be Grotesque.

What Is Likely To Happen? Either An Escalation Of Violence Or An Entire Change In The Whole Middle East Theater. It May Well Happen, And I Say This To My Palestinian Friends, That The Palestinians Have In A Certain Way Missed Their Hour. They Had Their Moment When The World's Public Opinion Was Behind Them, And A Considerable Part Of The Israeli Public Was Willing To Compromise With Them.

The Dreams And The Visions Of The Israeli Founding Fathers, These Were Very Very Ambitious Dreams. They Were World Reformers. They Wanted To Create A New And Improved Kind Of Humanity, Or At Least, A New And Improved Jewish Society, A New And Improved Jewish Individual Human Being Here. The Whole Zionist Project Was Based On A Whole Spectrum Of Different And Even Conflicting Dreams And Visions.

Israel Has Obviously Not Liberated The Palestinians In Gaza Or The West Bank. We Have Occupied Them, But We Have Not Liberated Them.

In Writing A Novel, The Writer Must Be Able To Identify Emotionally And Intellectually With Two Or Three Or Four Contradicting Perspectives And Give Each Of Them Very A Convincing Voice. It's Like Playing Tennis With Yourself And You Have To Be On Both Sides Of The Yard. You Have To Be On Both Sides, Or All Sides If There Are More Than Two Sides.

The Opposite Of Compromise Is Not Integrity. The Opposite Of Compromise Is Not Idealism. The Opposite Of Compromise Is Fanaticism And Death. And Yes, I Know One Or Two Things About Fanaticism And Death, And I Reject Them. The Alternative To Fanaticism And To Death Is Not Some Miraculous Realization That Someone Has Been Wrong And He Has To Apologize. No, The Answer To Fanaticism And To Death Is Curiosity And Compromise And Concession.

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. 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.

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.

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 I Say Compromise I Do Not Mean Capitulation. When I Say Compromise I Definitely Do Not Mean What Jesus Christ Meant When He Offered Us To Turn Our Other Cheek To Our Enemies. Compromise Means, Try To Meet The Other Somewhere Half-way. And, This Can Only Happen If The Other Is Willing To Go Half-way In Order To Meet You. That Is The Very Strict Line Between Compromise And Capitulation.

Imagination Needs Food Like Every Dog And Every Cat And Every Bird And Every Fish.

I'm Not Sure I'm Happy With Words Such As "task" Or "role" When They Are Attached To Literature. I Prefer To Talk About The Gift Of Literature Rather Than Its Role Or Task. You Know, Gynecology Has A Role; Sex Is A Gift. And Literature Is Not About Sending Messages.

Compromise Is Not Popular. It's Not At All Popular Among Young People Who These Days Call Themselves "activists." They Think Compromises Are Dishonest, Opportunistic, Humiliating. Not In My Vocabulary.

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.

Now, Israel Is A Fulfillment, And As A Fulfillment, It Is Flawed. The Fact That It Is Flawed Is Not So Much A Testimony About The Failures Of Israel. No, It Is A Testimony About The Nature Of Dreams.

Literature Exists Inside The Language. It's Made Of Words.

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.

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.

When I Was Little, My Ambition Was To Grow Up To Be A Book. Not A Writer. People Can Be Killed Like Ants. Writers Are Not Hard To Kill Either. But Not Books: However Systematically You Try To Destroy Them, There Is Always A Chance That A Copy Will Survive And Continue To Enjoy A Shelf-life In Some Corner On An Out-of-the-way Library Somehwere In Reykjavik, Valladolid Or Vancouver.

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.

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.

I Prefer To Talk About The Gift Of Literature Rather Than Its Role Or Task.

Of Course My Books Are Translated Into Many Languages. I Have Here, In My Home, Translations On My Shelf Of My Books Into Forty-five Different Languages. Almost None Of Them I Can Read. I Can Read Only The English Editions. But, I Know That A Translation Of A Work Of Literature Is Like Playing A Violin Concerto On The Piano. You Can Do This. You Can Do This Very Successfully On One Strict Condition: Never Try To Force The Piano To Produce The Sounds Of The Violin. This Will Be Grotesque. So, Different Musical Instruments Provide For Different Music.

The Old Testament Is Full Of Poetry, Prophecies, Chronicles, Documentations, Storytelling, Fairytales.

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.

The Minute We Leave South Lebanon We Will Have To Erase The Word Hezbollah From Our Vocabulary, Because The Whole Idea Of The State Of Israel Versus Hezbollah Was Sheer Folly From The Outset. It Most Certainly No Longer Will Be Relevant When Israel Returns To Her Internationally Recognized Northern Border.

The Gift Of Literature Is That, In Some Lucky Cases, Reading A Novel Or A Story Makes The Reader More Curious, More Open-minded.

In Some Of The Israeli Media, But Not All, They Read About Very Nasty Things Done By Israeli Settlers And Soldiers To Palestinian Arabs. This Is A Pain In The Neck For Many Israelis. They Say: Leave Us Alone, What Can We Do About It? Or They Say: Look At Syria, Look At Iraq, The West Bank Is Paradise By Comparison. I Was One Of The First To Say, Shortly After The Six-day War, That Occupation Is Corrupting. It Corrupts The Occupier And, In A Different Way, It Corrupts The Occupied.

Things Can Be Translated, But They Become Different.

I Follow The Way People Change. I Follow The Way People, Who Are Very Antagonized To One Another Become Very Close To One Another And Vice-versa. Sometimes I Follow The Way People Who Are Intimately Close To Each Other Move Apart. This Is My Business As A Novelist. It Is Not About Positions And Ideas.

I Want Israel To Live In Peace With Its Neighbors And In Peace With Itself.

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.

If We Don't Stop Somewhere, If We Don't Accept An Unhappy Compromise, Unhappy For Both Sides, If We Don't Learn How To Unhappily Coexist And Contain Our Burned Sense Of Injustice - If We Don't Learn How To Do That, We End Up In A Doomed State.

There Are Certain Concepts, Which Exist In English, And Are Unthinkable, Untranslatable Into Hebrew And Vice Versa.

It Is Wrong To Take An 18-year-old Boy Or Girl And Arm Them With Machine Guns And Make Them The Almighty King Of Some Little Arab Village. No Young Man, And No Old Man Either, Should Have So Much Power Over The Life And Death Of So Many Helpless Individuals. It Is Corrupting. It Sometimes Provokes Desperate, Savage And Indiscriminate Violence Among The Occupied.

… That Sour Blend Of Loneliness And Lust For Recognition, Shyness And Extravagance, Deep Insecurity And Self-intoxicated Egomania, That Drives Poets And Writers Out Of Their Rooms To Seek Each Other Out, To Rub Shoulders With One Another, Bully, Joke, Condescend, Feel Each Other, Lay A Hand On A Shoulder Or An Arm Round A Waist, To Chat And Argue With Little Nudges, To Spy A Little, Sniff Out What Is Cooking In Other Pots, Flatter, Disagree, Collude, Be Right, Take Offence, Apologise, Make Amends, Avoid Each Other, And Seek Each Other’s Company Again.

The Alternative To Fanaticism And To Death Is Not Some Miraculous Realization That Someone Has Been Wrong And He Has To Apologize. No, The Answer To Fanaticism And To Death Is Curiosity And Compromise And Concession.

Literature May Open A Third Eye In The Middle Of The Reader's Forehead.

Fundamentalist S Live Life With An Exclamation Point. I Prefer To Live My Life With A Question Mark.

Exclamation Points

I Write In Words. I Don't Write In Sounds Or In Shapes Or In Flavors.

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.

Sometimes, Recently Israeli-palestinian Conflict Is Indeed A Clash Between Wrong And Wrong. It Is Not As Simple As Fascism Was. Every Decent Man Had To Be Against Fascism, Period. It Is Not As Simple As Apartheid Or Colonialism Or Racism Or Misogyny. It Is Not Simple Because The Palestinians Have No Other Land. They Are Absolutely Right About This. The Israeli Jews Also Have No Other Land And They Are Absolutely Right About This. It Is A Tragedy Of Two Peoples Claiming The Same Very Small Country, About The Size Of New Jersey.

I Often Write About Reconciling. Reconciling, Or Maybe Half-reconciling Between Antagonists, Between People Who Are Deadly Enemies.

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.

Many Intellectuals In America And In Europe, They Are In The Habit Of Taking Sides: Who Are The Bad Guys? Who Are The Good Guys? They Launch A Demonstration Against The Bad Guys, Sign A Petition In Favor Of The Good Guys, And Going To Sleep Feeling Well About Themselves. This Is Not The Case Here. The Israeli-palestinian Conflict Is A Tragedy; It Is A Clash Between Right And Right.

Literature Belongs First And Foremost To The Language In Which It Is Being Written.

Literature May Make The Reader Reexamine Some Of His Or Her Own Conventions, Look At Himself Or Herself In A Different Way, Look At Others In A Different Way. This Goes Way Beyond Just Making Statements Or Manifesting Principles.

When I Need To Take A Side, I Write A Newspaper Article And I Tell My Government, "you Should Not Do That, You Should Do This." They Don't Listen To Me, But I've Been Doing This For Sixty Years Now. But, When I Write A Novel, I Am Not In That Business. I Follow The Way People Change. I Follow The Way People, Who Are Very Antagonized To One Another Become Very Close To One Another And Vice-versa. Sometimes I Follow The Way People Who Are Intimately Close To Each Other Move Apart.

In My Essays And Articles I Have Been Saying Again And Again That The Case Of Israel And Palestine, The Case Of Israel And The Arab World, And Indeed The Case Of Israel And Europe, Is Not Black And White. It's Not A Western Movie.

Black And White

If You Change Your Diet, Someone Will Call You A Traitor.

Literature Is Not Made Of Ideas And It's Not Made Of Concepts, Of Psychological Analysis. It's Made Of Words.

We Got A Wonderful Present From Stalin And Hitler That They Never Meant To Give Us. We Were Immune For 60 Years Or So To Aggression, Racism And Militarism. They Made Us Partly Immune To These Things. Now It Appears This Stalin-hitler Present Has Reached Its Expiration Date. We Were Spoiled By This. So Maybe We Are Just Emerging Out Of A Relatively Golden Age.

I Don't Think A Novel's Main Donation, Main Gift, Is The Document. The Document Is There, But A Novel Goes Beyond Documentation. It Goes Into Opening A New Vista, Opening A New Perspective, Showing Familiar Things In An Unfamiliar Way, And Making The Reader Reconsider The Documentary Facts Which He Or She May Have Known Before.

Universally, Not Only In Israel, People Want To Feel Good About Themselves. We All Want To Feel Good To Some Extent.

You Know, Gynecology Has A Role; Sex Is A Gift. And Literature Is Not About Sending Messages.

The Opposite Of Compromise Is Not Integrity. The Opposite Of Compromise Is Not Idealism. The Opposite Of Compromise Is Fanaticism And Death.

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.

Almost Every Modern Literary Form Existed In Hebrew Two Thousand Years Ago. And, Yes, It Existed Even During The Middle Ages.

Almost Without Exception, My Novels Are Rooted In Israel Because That's The Place I Know Well.

Don't Write About That Which You Don't Know.

In My Vocabulary, The Word "compromise" Is Synonymous To The Word "life".

I Don't Believe In Binational States. There Are Wonderful Examples Of This, Prosperous Multinational States: Switzerland, Switzerland And Switzerland. Everywhere Else - Be It Cyprus, Yugoslavia Or The Soviet Union, It Ended In A Terrible Bloodbath.

It Is Crystal Clear To Me That If Arabs Put Down A Draft Resolution Blaming Israel For The Recent Earthquake In Iran It Would Probably Have A Majority, The U.s. Would Veto It And Britain And France Would Abstain.

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.

I Know One Or Two Things About Fanaticism And Death, And I Reject Them.

Each Time I Have The Urge In Me To Make A Statement Or Send A Message Or To Issue A Manifesto, I Don't Bother To Write A Novel. I Write An Article And Publish It In A Popular Newspaper, Or I Make A Television Appearance.

When People Have Peace, They Hate It And Long For Excitement, And When They Have Excitement, They Want Peace.

Everybody Comes From Somewhere.

I Wrote A Novel About Israelis Who Live Their Own Lives On The Slope Of A Volcano. Near A Volcano One Still Falls In Love, One Still Gets Jealous, One Still Wants A Promotion, One Still Gossips.

Falling In Love

I'm A Great Believer In Compromise. I Know It's Not Popular Among Young Idealists. Compromise Is Not Popular. It's Not At All Popular Among Young People Who These Days Call Themselves "activists." They Think Compromises Are Dishonest, Opportunistic, Humiliating. Not In My Vocabulary. In My Vocabulary, The Word "compromise" Is Synonymous To The Word "life".

All Of My Novels Are Democracies.

The Kibbutz Way Of Life Is Not For Everyone. It Is Meant For People Who Are Not In The Business Of Working Harder Than They Should Be Working, In Order To Make More Money Than They Need, In Order To Buy Things They Don't Really Want, In Order To Impress People They Don't Really Like.

My Musical Instrument Is Hebrew And, To Me, This Is The Most Important Fact About My Writing. I Write In Words. I Don Write In Sounds Or In Shapes Or In Flavors. I Write In Words. And My Words Are Hebrew Words.

My Dream For Israel Is Peace, External And Internal Peace.

Each Time I Have The Urge In Me To Make A Statement Or Send A Message Or To Issue A Manifesto, I Don't Bother To Write A Novel. I Write An Article And Publish It In A Popular Newspaper, Or I Make A Television Appearance. I Would Not Waste Five Years Of My Life In Order To Send To The Israeli Readers A Simple Message Such As, "let Us Change A Policy Or Stop The Settlements," Or, "let Us Strive For Peace." This Is Not What It Is About.

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.

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.

Literature Belongs First And Foremost To The Language In Which It Is Being Written. 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.

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.

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. The Moment You Carry Out Any Of Your Dreams Or Your Fantasies - Travel Around The World, Climbing A High Mountain, Buying A New House, Writing A Novel, Carrying Out A Sexual Fantasy, Traveling To An Unknown Country - The Moment You Carry Out Your Dreams, It's Always, By Definition Less Perfect And Rosy Than It Had Been As A Dream. This Is The Nature Of Dreams.

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.

Donald Trump Basically Said: One State, Two States, Do Whatever You Like. I Do Not Think This Was A Serious Statement Of American Policy. This Was Him Shrugging His Shoulders And Saying: Who Cares About It. I Think He Doesn't Even Have The Faintest Idea Of What He Wants To Do In The Middle East.

I Recommend The Art Of Slow Reading.

"the State Of The Jews" Was Not A Title Of A Country. It Was A Title Of A Futuristic Novel.

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 Work In Hebrew. Hebrew Is Deeply Inspired By Other Languages. 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. The English Language Took In Many Many Fertilizations, Many Many Genes, From Other Languages, From Foreign Languages - Latin, French, Nordic Languages, German, Scandinavian Languages. Every Language Has Influences And Is An Influence.

The Six-day War Laid A Foundation Of Deep Hatred Toward Israel 50 Years Ago. I Said This At A Very Early Moment Back Then, When People Were Chanting About Liberating Ancestral Land. I Was Quick To Say That Regardless Of The Future Of These Territories, Liberated They Are Not, Because The Term Liberation Only Applies To Human Beings And Not To Land, Not To Real Estate.

Let Me Make It Very Clear: When I Say Compromise I Do Not Mean Capitulation. When I Say Compromise I Definitely Do Not Mean What Jesus Christ Meant When He Offered Us To Turn Our Other Cheek To Our Enemies. Compromise Means, Try To Meet The Other Somewhere Half-way. And, This Can Only Happen If The Other Is Willing To Go Half-way In Order To Meet You. That Is The Very Strict Line Between Compromise And Capitulation. I'm A Great Believer In Compromises. I Do Not Believe In Capitulation.

A Long War Is Degenerating - It Ruins The Mind And The Soul And Psyche Of Individuals And Nations.

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.

In Many Ways, I Regard Sharon And Arafat As Birds Of A Feather.

Out There, In The World, All The Walls Were Covered With Graffiti: "yids, Go Back To Palestine," So We Came Back To Palestine, And Now The Worldatlarge Shouts At Us: "yids, Get Out Of Palestine."

I Write In Words. And My Words Are Hebrew Words.

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.

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.

The Revival Of Hebrew, As A Spoken Language, Is A Fascinating Story, Which I'm Afraid I Cannot Squeeze Into A Few Sentences. But, Let Me Give You A Clue. 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. 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.

Well, My Definition Of A Tragedy Is A Clash Between Right And Right.

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