Yair > Recent Status Updates

"The Palestinians were the Philistines. They were the peoples of Canaan. Somehow our story and yours is repeating itself."

Oz, Amos. In the Land of Israel (p. 176). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.

Barely two hundred meters from the Damascus Gate he says these words to me. In the heart of Jerusalem he says these words to me: “First of all . . . we must return to Jerusalem.” How very strange.

Oz, Amos. In the Land of Israel (p. 162). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.

"Judaism is a civilization, and one of the few civilizations that have left their mark on all of mankind. Religion is a central element in the Jewish civilization, perhaps even its origin, but that civilization cannot be presented as nothing more than religion."

Oz, Amos. In the Land of Israel (pp. 135-136). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.

"Begin's a different story altogether. He was the one who broke the Zionist taboo against uprooting a Jewish settlement. That’s why I’m so worried after the Yammit business: he’s capable of anything. Anything might happen.”

Oz, Amos. In the Land of Israel (p. 113). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.

And Eshkol went on: “If so, then all the death and destruction throughout our history was the finger of God. Maybe the finger of God really is giving us Hebron now. Maybe. Who knows? Obber ich hob moire.”

In other words, I am frightened. Literally, I have fear.

Oz, Amos. In the Land of Israel (pp. 72-76). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.

“The situation? Not bad, thank God.M’ken leben. We’re surviving. Nothing to complain about. Thank God for His daily blessings.”

Oz, Amos. In the Land of Israel (p. 26). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.

"Individuals given to exclamation points are still all over the place, particularly in the mountains, loud and clear as ever, sometimes engaged in dangerous actions."

Oz, Amos. In the Land of Israel . Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.

"Yet, as history teaches us, our war economy can only make us a country given over to galloping inflation, not to mention industrial and human waste in gigantic proportions.”

Kosinski, Jerzy. The Devil Tree (p. 145). Grove Atlantic. Kindle Edition.

You could be what Ophelia imagined Hamlet to be: ‘the courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s eyes, tongue, sword. The glass of fashion and the mould of form, the observ’d of all observers.’

Kosinski, Jerzy. The Devil Tree (p. 125). Grove Atlantic. Kindle Edition.

’“While you got yourself high on that,’ said one of the officers, pointing at the stash, ‘you tried to kill your lady.’ He directed his gaze at four bullet holes that hadn’t been in the bedroom walls when I fell asleep.

Kosinski, Jerzy. The Devil Tree (pp. 100-101). Grove Atlantic. Kindle Edition.

"I said that living is an arbitrary matter; that every time I climbed a mountain in Nepal I expected to die on the way up or on the way down; that even now, whenever I drive anywhere, I don’t expect to get where I’m going."

Kosinski, Jerzy. The Devil Tree (p. 70). Grove Atlantic. Kindle Edition.

"And I’ve gained all my wealth and power without risking my life in a war or a rebellion, without bravery or cowardice, betrayal, suffering, or sacrifice. Thus, as a dramatic hero I have no roots in Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, or Stendhal. Am I merely an example of the banality of power and wealth in America?"

Kosinski, Jerzy. The Devil Tree (p. 48). Grove Atlantic. Kindle Edition.

"In response, she said that a man who comes but cannot go is hardly her idea of a perfect lover; that, in fact, she considers my ability to hold off my orgasms, or to go through a series of them, a hang-up as morbid as the control it requires."

Kosinski, Jerzy. The Devil Tree (p. 47). Grove Atlantic. Kindle Edition.

"The next in line, a shaving cream princeling, was a disturbed man. Periodically he would offer his fortune to the poor, but when thousands of them showed up at his door begging for help, he would withdraw and get high on hashish. Last year he blew his head off with a hunting rifle."

Kosinski, Jerzy. The Devil Tree (pp. 34-35). Grove Atlantic. Kindle Edition.

“To remain not liable, I had to be on the move, with no forwarding address.”

Kosinski, Jerzy. The Devil Tree (p. 25). Grove Atlantic. Kindle Edition.

“Look, man, I’m just trying to be friendly, that’s all."

Kosinski, Jerzy. The Devil Tree (p. 7). Grove Atlantic. Kindle Edition.

"He had caused a disturbance somewhere deep inside the earth, and the waves were now beginning to rise to the surface, touching every part of the ground at once.

Something had happened, something new was in the air, and there were days that spring when I walked through the city and almost imagined that I could feel the sidewalks vibrating under my feet."

Auster, Paul. Leviathan (p. 245).

"It became his private religion, his form of daily prayer. Scan the newspapers and hold your breath. Make sure they weren’t after you. Make sure you could go on living another twenty-four hours."

Auster, Paul. Leviathan (p. 227). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

"He had been in California for just over a day, and already his bridges were burning behind him."

Auster, Paul. Leviathan (p. 219). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

"Beyond reading the papers and watching the television news, he did almost nothing. He slept. He stared out the window. He thought about the immensity of fear."

Auster, Paul. Leviathan (p. 188). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

"It was only later that it hit him—long after he was back on the road. Driving down to New York that night, he suddenly understood that these were the materials for constructing a bomb."

Auster, Paul. Leviathan (p. 176). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Beyond all agony and anxiety lies the most important ingredient of self-reflection: the preciousness of my own existence. To my own heart my existence is unique, unprecedented, priceless, exceedingly precious, and I resist the thought of gambling away its meaning.

- ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL,

"Who Is Man?"

Kosinski, Jerzy. The Devil Tree . Grove Atlantic. Kindle Edition.

“You’re confusing thoughts with deeds,” I said. “There’s a world of difference between doing something and just thinking about it. If we didn’t make that distinction, life would be impossible.”

Auster, Paul. Leviathan (p. 128). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

“Grant stood by me when I was crazy. I stood by him when he was drunk, and now we stand by each other always.”

Auster, Paul. Leviathan (p. 115). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

“So you switched. Is that what you’re trying to tell me? Lillian talked you into trading places with her.” “No one talked anyone into anything. We decided on it together.”

Auster, Paul. Leviathan (p. 82). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

"As Sachs put it the first time he came to visit me, it was a sanctuary of inwardness, a room in which the only possible activity was thought."

An American Kafka but that feels reductive, there's a drive and a dynamism, off-set not at all by Auster's master rendering of the brooding nihilism and anxious mindset of the postwar postBoom American dread. All cooly done, the sentiments left bare, it works.

"Almost like a child, I sometimes thought, like a prodigious child playing with his toys."

Auster, Paul. Leviathan (p. 55). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Ambitious reading, some glorious catching up with old favorite writers, engages the mind like little else.

"No one can say where a book comes from, least of all the person who writes it. Books are born out of ignorance, and if they go on living after they are written, it’s only to the degree that they cannot be understood."

Auster, Paul. Leviathan (p. 40). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

"Sachs automatically assumed great intelligence on the part of the person he was talking to, thereby investing that person with a sense of his own dignity and importance. I think it was that quality I admired most about him, that innate skill at drawing out the best in others."

Auster, Paul. Leviathan (p. 19). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.