Yehuda Amichai
I've often said that all poetry is political. This is because real poems deal with a human response to reality and politics is part of reality, history in the making. Even if a poet writes about sitting in a glass house drinking tea, it reflects politics.Collection: History
There are two languages: one as things seem to us and the other of knowledge.Collection: Knowledge
I was a very religious child - I went to synagogue at least once, sometimes twice, a day. And I remember my religiousness as good - I think religion is good for children, especially educated children, because it allows for imagination, a whole imaginative world apart from the practical world.
My poems are political in the deeper sense of the word. Political means to live in your time, to be a man of your time.
I try to stay a civilian, to live as a human, not as a poet.
The world of religion isn't a logical world; that's why children like it. It's a world of worked-out fantasies, very similar to children's stories or fairy tales.
Every intelligent person, whether he's an artist or not - a mathematician, a doctor, a scientist - possesses a poetic way of seeing and describing the world.
The reason a poet is a poet is to write poems, not to advertise himself as a poet.
I think the end is endless. It's either a big black hole or a big white light or both together. But it's totally meaningless, because even if someone would explain it, I wouldn't understand it.
The soul inside me is the last foreign language I'm learning.Collection: Soul
Jerusalem is a port city on the shore of eternity.Collection: Israel
Behind all this, some great happiness is hiding.Collection: Happiness
From the place where we are right, flowers will not grow in the spring.Collection: Spring
And as we stray further from love, we multiply the words. Had we remained together we could have become a silence.Collection: Love
Love is like a reservoir of kindness and pleasure, like silos and pools during a siege.Collection: Kindness
It was not an adventure; it was my life.Collection: Adventure
Here (Jerusalem), tears do not weaken the eyes, they only polish and shine the hardness of faces like stone.Collection: Eye
I’ve never been in those places where I’ve never been and never will be, I have no share in the infinity of light-years and dark-years, but the darkness is mine, and the light, and my time is my own.Collection: Dark
Every intelligent person, whether hes an artist or not - a mathematician, a doctor, a scientist - possesses a poetic way of seeing and describing the world.Collection: Artist
And I said to myself: That's true, hope needs to be like barbed wire to keep out despair, hope must be a mine field.Collection: Despair
Knowledge of peace passes from country to country, like children's games, which are so much alike, everywhere.Collection: Country
What are you going to do now? You'll collect loves like stamps. You've got doubles and no one will trade with you. And you've got damaged ones.Collection: Stamps
A flock of sheep near the airport or a high voltage generator beside the orchard: these combinations open up my life like a wound, but they also heal it. That's why my feelings always come in twos.Collection: Airports
I wanted to be calm, like a mound with all its cities destroyed, and tranquil, like a full cemetery.Collection: Cities
The phrase I like to use to describe my sense of time-a play on comparative literature - is comparative time.Collection: Play
God has pity on kindergarten childrenCollection: Children
Tonight I think again of many days that are sacrificed for one night of love. Of the waste and the fruit of the waste, of plenty and of fire. And how painlessly-time.Collection: Time
Even if a poet writes about sitting in a glass house drinking tea, it reflects politics.Collection: Drinking
The memory of my father is wrapped up in white paper, like sandwiches taken for a day of work. Just as a magician takes towers and rabbits out of his hat, he drew love from his small body.Collection: Memories
The world of religion isn’t a logical world; that’s why children like it. It’s a world of worked-out fantasies, very similar to children’s stories or fairy tales.Collection: Stories