A. B. Yehoshua Quotes

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

Traveling is one expression of the desire to cross boundaries.

– 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

The question of boundaries is a major question of the Jewish people because the Jews are the great experts of crossing boundaries. They have a sense of identity inside themselves that doesn’t permit them to cross boundaries with other people.

– A. B. Yehoshua

The most difficult and complicated part of the writing process is the beginning.

– 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

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

– 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

I don’t think that when Zionism began there was a claim that we were losing – even in part – our capacity to contribute to other peoples.

– 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

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