Itamar Yaoz-Kest

Itamar Yaoz-Kest (b. 1934) is a Hungarian-Israeli author and poet, born in Hungary, interned in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1944 and came to Israel in 1951. He is recipient of several prizes including the Talpir Prize (1967), the Herzl Award (1972), the Wertheim Prize for Poetry (1984), the Kugel Prize (1984), the Lea Goldberg Prize (1990), the Prime Minister's Prize twice (1992; 2007), the Ministry of Education and Culture Award for Translation (1998), the Israel Efrat Prize (1999), the President's Prize for Lifetime Achievement (2002), the ACUM Prize for Lifetime Achievement (2004) and the Brenner Prize (2016). In 1992 he was honored by the Hungarian Government for his translations of Hungarian poetry.

Wisdom & Quotes

• Art must hurt. First, it must hurt the artist himself, the artist must experience pain before he creates. Otherwise, he won't be able to produce tears. A true artist must describe the things he is most afraid of, all that which he wished to avoid.
• Laughter spreads ripples on the surface; tears come from inside.
• I closed the door on my past, but it crept back in through the window.

Yakuba Gowon