Chaim Potok quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Chaim Potok

Chaim Potok Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Chaim Potok on Wise Famous Quotes.

A man must be forced to choose. It is only when you are forced to choose that you know what is important to you.

I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art.

Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way!
Thou art the Potter and I am the clay.

I do not know what evil is when it comes to art. I only know what is good art and what is bad art.

A life is measured by how it is lived for the sake of heaven.

We will have many fights. But they will be for the sake of Torah.

Two hundred or more years ago most people on the planet were never aware of any reality other than the one into which they were brought up.

The silence became unreal and seemed suddenly filled with a noise of its own, the noise of a too long silence.

And yet there are some magnificent things from Freud, profound insights into the nature of man.

It was no joy waking up after a dream about that man. He left a taste of thunder in my mouth.

All beginnings are hard.

Something that is yours forever is never precious

An artist is a person first.

It was a large store and i did not like to go in it because its brightness was cold, like sunlight on distant ice.

My father's right to shape my life had been taken from him by the same being who gave his own life meaning - the Rebbe.

An artist has got to get acquainted with himself just as much as he can. It is no easy job, for it is not a present-day habit of humanity.

You don't want to make mistakes with people. Sometimes when you make a mistake you lose a human soul.

There are times when those who fear God make themselves very unpleasant as human beings.

We need to listen to one another.

We cannot build our lives around sickness, Asher. We must have faith in the Master of the Universe.

Do you know what I don't understand about that ball game? I don't understand why I wanted to kill you.

It is impossible to fuse totally with a culture for which you feel a measure of antagonism.

It's nice to be able to retire. Comforting." "You think so?" he said. "Isn't it?" "No," he said. "Endings are never nice.

A man must sometimes be forced to make choices, for it is only by his choices that we know what a man truly is.

Art is whether or not there is a scream in him wanting to get out in a special way.

Each generation thinks it fights new battles. But the battles are the same. Only the people are different.

Yes, there is some thought about making a film of My Name Is Asher Lev.

I held it close to my face and smelled the ink. I have always loved the smell of ink in a new book.

It's only a book. But what it means to write a book.

God is merciful in what He sometimes lets us forget.

Can you understand what it means for something to be incomplete?" my mother had once asked me. I understood, I understood.

A word is worth one coin, silence is worth two

I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own.

It is strange how ideas can float about and be ignored until they are put into a book. A book can be a weapon ...

Art is a person's private vision expressed in aesthetic forms.

If a person has a contribution to make, he must make it in public. If learning is not made public, it is a waste.

No one knows he is fortunate until he becomes unfortunate, that's the way the world is.

It's not a pretty world, Papa.'
'I've noticed,' my father said softly.

When the alternative is possible disaster, a man must gamble.

Honest differences of opinion should never be permitted to destroy a friendship, he told me. Haven't you learned that yet, Reuven?

In other words, Judaism is not Calvinism.

... the world will indulge you just so long Asher Lev. Then it will stop. You will simply have to grow accustomed to that truth.

A writer is a strange instrument of our species, a harp of sorts, fine-tuned to the dark contradictions of life.

One derives great moral strength from a cup of coffee, I said.

An artist is a person first. He is an individual. If there is no person, there is no artist.

I grew up encrusted with lead and spectrumed with crayons. My dearest companions were Eberhard and Crayola. Washing for meals was a cosmic enterprise.

Oh, it makes a difference, I thought. And if it doesn't make a difference you will make it make a difference.

Two people who are true friends are like two bodies with one soul

I'm not altogether certain that a fundamentalism of necessity has to argue that it is the only reading of the human experience in order to stay alive.

Take care of your father," he said. "There aren't many people like him around anymore.

Millions of people can draw. Art is whether there is a scream in you wanting to get out in a special way.

Was it a pretty drawing, Asher?'
'No Mama. But it was a good drawing ... I don't want to make pretty drawings, Mama.

If everybody who had brains and doubts left Orthodoxy, we would be in a great deal of trouble.

Each work seems to give me the most trouble at the time I'm working on it.

Perhaps. But it is childish to think of what might have been.

We become like dead branches and last year's leaves and what the hell good are we for ourselves and the world in a mental ghetto.

The everyday was king. And the courtiers were popularization, superficiality, doubt, cynicism. The century was exhausted.

As a species we are always hungry for new knowledge.

I'm constantly revising. Once the book is written and typed, I go through the entire draft again.

They become angry and ugly and they fight anything that's a threat to them. We have to learn how to fight back without hurting them too much.

It is when you are angry that you must watch how you talk.

Williamsburg was stifling, narcotized by the heat.

It's my world, best friend. And I haven't seen anything outside that's better.

I don't work on my Sabbath. I write five-and-a-half or six days a week.

They are so rigid,' he said in a sudden angry voice. 'Why do they not see that this rigidity turns away our greatest minds?

Seeds must be sown everywhere. Only some will bear fruit. But there would not be the fruit from the few had the many not been sown

In Russia I went to a great yeshiva, and in America I work in a carnival.

Good-bye, Davita. Be discontented with the world. But be respectful at the same time.

But I do not know how else the work can be done. To touch a person's heart, you must see a person's face. One cannot reach a soul through a telephone.

I walked the streets and tasted the golden sun that lay across the city.

Come, let us have some tea and continue to talk about happy things.