Yehuda Amichai QUOTES

1 " I believe with perfect faith that at this very moment
millions of human beings are standing at crossroads
and intersections, in jungles and deserts,
showing each other where to turn, what the right way is,
which direction. They explain exactly where to go,
what is the quickest way to get there, when to stop
and ask again. There, over there. The second
turnoff, not the first, and from there left or right,
near the white house, by the oak tree.
They explain with excited voices, with a wave of the hand
and a nod of the head: There, over there, not that there, the other there,
as in some ancient rite. This too is a new religion.
I believe with perfect faith that at this very moment. "

― Yehuda Amichai

2 " Now and then, I remember you in times
Unbelievable. And in places not made for memory
But for the transient, the passing that does not remain. "

― Yehuda Amichai

3 " 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. "

― Yehuda Amichai

4 " Try to remember some details. For the world
is filled with people who were torn from their sleep
with no one to mend the tear,
and unlike wild beasts they live
each in his lonely hiding place and they die
together on battlefields
and in hospitals.
And the earth will swallow all of them,
good and evil together, like the followers of Korah,
all of them in their rebellion against death,
their mouths open till the last moment,
praising and cursing in a single
howl. Try, try
to remember some details. "

― Yehuda Amichai

5 " People caught in a homeland-trap:
to speak now in this weary language,
a language that was torn from its sleep in the Bible: dazzled,
it wobbles from mouth to mouth. In a language that once described
miracles and God, to say car, bomb, God. "

― Yehuda Amichai , The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai

6 " Once I was sitting on the steps near the gate at David's Citadel and I put down my two heavy baskets beside me. A group of tourists stood there around their guide, and I became their point of reference. "You see that man over there with the baskets? A little to the right of his head there's an arch from the Roman period. A little to the right of his head." "But he's moving, he's moving!" I said to myself: Redemption will come only when they are told, "Do you see that arch over there from the Roman period? It doesn't matter, but near it, a little to the left and then down a bit, there's a man who has just bought fruit and vegetables for his family. "

― Yehuda Amichai , The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai

7 " Jerusalem, the only city in the world
where the right to vote is granted even to the dead. "

― Yehuda Amichai , The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai

8 " The sun thought that Jerusalem was a sea
and set in her: a terrible mistake. "

― Yehuda Amichai , The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai

9 " already she drew in the sand
with her big toe:
King Solomon, as though
he were a rubber ball, an
apocalyptic, bearded herring, an
imperial walking-stick, an
amalgam, half chicken
and half Solomon. "

― Yehuda Amichai , The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai

10 " Where do you feel your soul inside you?"
Stretched between my mouth-hole and my asshole,
a white thread, not transparent mist,
cramped in some corner between two bones,
in pain.
When it is full it disappears, like a cat. "

― Yehuda Amichai , The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai

11 " A friend of mine tells a story about some Israeli students who were called up in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. As soon as they were notified, they went back to their rooms at University, and each packed his gear, a rifle, and a book of Yehuda Amichai’s poems. "

― Yehuda Amichai , The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai

12 " A man doesn't have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn't have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.

A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history
takes years and years to do.

A man doesn't have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.

And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
an amateur. It tries and it misses,
gets muddled, doesn't learn a thing,
drunk and blind in its pleasures
and its pains.

He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
the leaves growing dry on the ground,
the bare branches pointing to the place
where there's time for everything.
"

― Yehuda Amichai , The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai

13 " 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. "

― Yehuda Amichai

14 " And what will you do now? You'll collect loves
Like stamps. You've got doubles and no one
Will trade you and you have the damaged ones. "

― Yehuda Amichai

15 " I know a man
who photographed the view he saw
from the window of the room where he made love
and not the face of the woman he loved there. "

― Yehuda Amichai

16 " People use each other
as a healing for their pain. They put each other
on their existential wound,
on the eye, on the cunt, on mouth and open hand.
They hold each other and won’t let go. "

― Yehuda Amichai

17 " Look, just as time isn't inside clocks
love isn't inside bodies:
bodies only tell the love. "

― Yehuda Amichai , The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai

18 " Sometimes I come crashing down inside myself
without anyone noticing. "

― Yehuda Amichai

19 " In my life are many windows
and many graves.

Sometimes they exchange
roles:
then a window is closed forever,
then by way of a gravestone
I can see
very far.

(Hebrew-to-English translation by Rabbi Steven Sager) "

― Yehuda Amichai

20 " It was not an adventure; it was my life. "

― Yehuda Amichai

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