A. B. Yehoshua Quotes

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A. B. Yehoshua

Profession : Novelist

Birth : December 9, 1936

Let us not forget: The Palestinians in Gaza are our permanent neighbors, and we are theirs.

A. B. Yehoshua

And this is one of the major questions of our lives: how we keep boundaries, what permission we have to cross boundaries, and how we do so.

A. B. Yehoshua

We always knew how to honor fallen soldiers. They were killed for our sake, they went out on our mission. But how are we to mourn a random man killed in a terrorist attack while sitting in a cafe? How do you mourn a housewife who got on a bus and never returned?

A. B. Yehoshua

The weapon of suicide bombing is so desperate that you aren't even left with the possibility of taking revenge or punishing anyone; the terrorist is killed along with his victims, his blood mixing with theirs.

A. B. Yehoshua

One of the dreams of Zionism was to be a bridge. Instead, we are creating exclusion between the East and the West instead of creating bridges; we are contributing to the conflict between East and West by our stupid desire to have more.

A. B. Yehoshua

Jews outside Israel live in permanent contradiction. I think they should come home.

A. B. Yehoshua

Intimate relationships are a gold mine for literature to explore, to understand, to describe.

A. B. Yehoshua

I come from two parts of the oriental community - Jerusalemite and North African Jews.

A. B. Yehoshua

I think about the Arabs not as enemies but as cousins. Even when we are in a fierce conflict with them, they are more of a kind of family - with all the problems of a family. We have to live with them.

A. B. Yehoshua

So with truth - there is a certain moment when one can say, this is the truth and here I put a dot, a stop, and I go to another thing. A judge has to put an end to a deliberation. But for a historian, there's never an end to the past. It can go on and on and on.

A. B. Yehoshua

The malady of the Jews is that they don't see territory as part of their identity.

A. B. Yehoshua

I deeply respect literature and expect to gain insight from a book and to identify emotionally with its characters. I therefore avoid reading suspense novels or science fiction.

A. B. Yehoshua

It's not what the rabbis say that defines Jewishness but what we Israelis do every day - our actions and our values.

A. B. Yehoshua

We must see what in the Israeli identity - in the Israeli - we can give to other people rather than speaking so often of taking, expanding territory.

A. B. Yehoshua

For 50 years - that is, for most of my adult life - I worked tirelessly for the two-state solution in the face of countless frustrations, both on the part of the Israeli governments and the Palestinian Authority.

A. B. Yehoshua

The literary trappings and moralizing of science fiction I find insufficiently compelling.

A. B. Yehoshua

Israelis are the total Jews.

A. B. Yehoshua

Traveling is one expression of the desire to cross boundaries.

A. B. Yehoshua

Israel is too attached to America, too influenced by America. It should be connected to Europe. America is based on mythology - the free man, the individual, the open frontier. Europe is more conscious of history. Take Britain and Shakespeare. You shape your identity through history.

A. B. Yehoshua

I am a serious reader, and I read slowly.

A. B. Yehoshua