Chaim Potok Quotes
Top 71 wise famous quotes and sayings 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.
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.
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.
Do you know what I don't understand about that ball game? I don't understand why I wanted to kill you.
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.
Each generation thinks it fights new battles. But the battles are the same. Only the people are different.
Can you understand what it means for something to be incomplete?" my mother had once asked me. I understood, I understood.
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 ...
If a person has a contribution to make, he must make it in public. If learning is not made public, it is a waste.
Honest differences of opinion should never be permitted to destroy a friendship, he told me. Haven't you learned that yet, Reuven?
... 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.
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.
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.
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.
'No Mama. But it was a good drawing ... I don't want to make pretty drawings, Mama.
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.
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.
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