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.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the importance of accepting compromises to avoid a detrimental state of conflict.
Amos Oz emphasizes the necessity of navigating conflicts through acceptance and compromise. He suggests that failing to find a way to coexist amid disagreements leads to a deteriorating situation for all parties involved. By learning to accept and manage our sense of injustice, we can avoid the doom that comes from unresolved tensions.
In practice
During a team meeting to resolve issues, I quoted Amos Oz to emphasize the need for compromise.
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.
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.
Fundamentalist s live life with an exclamation point. I prefer to live my life with a question mark.
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.
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.
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.
Spiritual principles do not change, but we do.
What should be the future of Israel? Is the land the most important choice, and for that reason to keep the whole of the land at any cost, or to have a partition and build the Jewish state on part of the land? And the other part?
Opponents of civil liberties contend the NSA data collection has made our country more safe, but even the most vocal defenders of the program have failed to identify a single thwarted plot.
The lies we live will always be confessed in the stories that we tell.
Night is a time of rigor, but also of mercy. There are truths which one can see only when it’s dark
A society needs famous people; the question is whom it chooses for that role. Any criticism of its choice is by implication a criticism of that society.
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