Amos Oz on Writing Fiction and Arguing with Taxi Drivers

“I don’t think there is a lasting happiness. I think this is unthinkable. In the Jewish tradition we have no less than six Hebrew words for joy: “simcha,” “alitzut,” “chedva,” “tzahala”, but no proper word for happiness and perhaps rightly so. Joy is something that comes and goes. … The founding fathers and mothers of the kibbutz community believed that they can change human nature in one blow. … This was naive, it was unrealistic. Human nature is almost unchangeable, certainly it cannot be changed in one blow, and in one generation.”