Black Box Quotes

“Faith, coming from the lack of faith: as much as the faith in oneself is demolished, as much the intoxicating faith in the salvation becomes strong and the desperate need to be save grows. The savior is that much great, as you’re small, insignificant and unworthy. Anri Begrson writes: “It’s not true that faith can move mountains. On the contrary, the main thing in faith is the ability not to notice anything, even the moving of the mountain in front of you. It’s like a hermetic screen, fully impregnable to the facts.”
― Amos Oz, Black Box

“Η εγκληματικότητα και η αυτοθυσία είναι οι δύο πλευρές του ίδιου νομισματος. Η καταδυνάστευση όπως ο αλτρουισμός, η βιαιότητα όπως η αυτοθυσία, η καταπίεση του πλησίον όπως η καταπίεση του εαυτού μας, η σωτηρία της ψυχής αυτών που διαφέρουν από σένα όπως και η εξολόθρευση αυτών που διαφέρουν απο σένα: δεν πρόκειται για ζευγη αντιθέτων αλλά για διαφορετικές εκφράσεις της ανθρώπινης κενότητας και αναξιότητας.”
― Amos Oz, Black Box

“You probably recall the famous statement at the beginning of Anna Karenina, in which Tolstoy, donning there the cloak of a calm village deity and hovering over the void full of benign toleration and loving kindness, declares from on high that all happy families resemble one another, while unhappy families are all unhappy in their own way. With all due respect to Tolstoy I’m telling you that the opposite is true: Unhappy people are mainly plunged in conventional suffering, living out in sterile routine one of five or six threadbare clichés of misery. Whereas happiness is a rare, fine vessel, a sort of Chinese vase, and the few people who have reached it have shaped and formed it line by line over the course of years, each in his own image and likeness, each in his own character, so that no two happinesses are alike. And in the molding of their happiness they have instilled their own suffering and humiliation. Like refining gold from ore. There is happiness in the world, Alec, even if it is more ephemeral than a dream. Indeed in your case it is beyond your reach. As a star is beyond the reach of a mole. Not “the satisfaction of approval,” not praise and advancement and conquest and domination, not submission and surrender, but the thrill of fusion. The merging of the I with another. As an oyster enfolds a foreign body and is wounded and turns it into its pearl while the warm water still surrounds and encompasses everything. You have never tasted this fusion, not once in your whole life. When the body is a musical instrument in the hands of the soul. When Other and I strike root in each other and become a single coral. And when the drip of the stalactite slowly feeds the stalagmite until the two of them become one.”
― Amos Oz, Black Box

“The sad thing is that sentimentality is constantly getting the better of my pure reason. Antediluvian memories tie me to you like a pair of handcuffs. You are stuck in my soul like a rusty nail without a head. And apparently I am stuck in you too, somewhere among the cogwheels you are equipped with instead of a soul.”
― Amos Oz, Black Box

“Jednom sam ga sreo pred alatnicom. Pitao sam ga što to čita. Slegao je ramenima i neodlučno mi odgovorio:
"Knjigu. Zašto pitaš?"
Pitao sam ga kakvu knjigu čita.
"O jeziku."
Što konkretno?
"Gramatiku za svakoga. Da skinem već jednom s dnevnog reda pravopis i te stvari."
Pa zar se može "knjiga o jeziku" čitati kao i nekakvo štivo koje čitaš da ti prođe vrijeme?
"Riječi i te stvari", poklonio mi je svoj polagani osmijeh, "to ti je isto kao i poznavanje ljudi. Odakle potječu. S kim su u rodu. Kako se svaka od njih ponaša u različitim situacijama. Osim toga", zastao je i poslao desnu ruku na dugo putovanje oko svoje krupne glave da bi se počešao po lijevoj sljepoočnici, nelogična a ipak gotovo kraljevska gesta, - "osim toga, što znači : 'da ti prođe vrijeme', to uopće ne postoji. vrijeme jednostavno ne prolazi."
Ne prolazi? Kako to misliš?
"Šta ja znam? Možda je upravo obratno: da mi prolazimo u vremenu. Šta ja znam? Ili možda vrijeme prolazi u ljudima? Bi li ti se dalo sjesti malo samnom da sortiramo sjeme? Sjeme je u šupi. U hladu. Osim ako ne želiš raditi nešto drugo. Ili bi možda htio slagati prazne vreće?”
― Amos Oz, Black Box

“His life is his prison while his death is limned to him as a prospect of paradoxical resurrection, a promise of miraculous redemption from his vale of tears.”
― Amos Oz, Black Box