Chaim Potok Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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.

  Chaim Potok

  Silence, Quality, Dimensions

  Chaim Potok (2016). “The Chosen”, p.284, Simon and Schuster

  58 Copy quote

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

  Chaim Potok

  World, Way, Unfortunate

  Chaim Potok (2016). “The Chosen”, p.91, Simon and Schuster

  11 Copy quote

• Truth has to be given in riddles. People can't take truth if it comes charging at them like a bull. The bull is always killed. You have to give people the truth in a riddle, hide it so they go looking for it and find it piece by piece; that way they learn to live with it.

  Chaim Potok

  People, Giving, Pieces

  Chaim Potok (2010). “The Gift of Asher Lev”, p.240, Ballantine Books

  13 Copy quote

• Something that is yours forever is never precious

  Chaim Potok

  Forever

  Chaim Potok (2009). “My Name Is Asher Lev”, p.165, Anchor

  32 Copy quote

• I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life.

  Chaim Potok

  Eye, Men, Long

  Chaim Potok (2016). “The Chosen”, p.234, Simon and Schuster

  17 Copy quote

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

  Chaim Potok

  Fighting, Thinking, People

  Chaim Potok (2012). “The Promise”, p.241, Anchor

  9 Copy quote

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

  Chaim Potok

  Art, Special, Way

  Chaim Potok (2003). “My Name Is Asher Lev”, Anchor

  40 Copy quote

• Art begins . . . when someone interprets, when someone sees the world through his own eyes. Art happens when what is seen becomes mixed with the inside of the person who is seeing it.

  Chaim Potok

  Art, Eye, World

  Chaim Potok (2010). “The Gift of Asher Lev”, p.170, Ballantine Books

  23 Copy quote

• A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life.

  Chaim Potok

  Men, Given, Blink Of An Eye

  Chaim Potok (2016). “The Chosen”, p.234, Simon and Schuster

  11 Copy quote

• I looked at my right hand, the hand with which I painted. There was power in that hand. Power to create and destroy. Power to bring pleasure and pain. Power to amuse and horrify. There was in that hand the demonic and the divine at one and the same time. The demonic and the divine were two aspects of the same force. Creation was demonic and divine. Creativity was demonic and divine. I was demonic and divine.

  Chaim Potok

  Pain, Creativity, Hands

  Chaim Potok (2009). “My Name Is Asher Lev”, p.382, Anchor

  28 Copy quote

• He taught them that the purpose of a man is to make his life holy--every aspect of his life: eating, drinking praying, sleeping. God is everywhere, he told them, and if it seems at times that He is hidden from us, it is only because we have not yet learned to seek Him correctly.

  Chaim Potok

  Drinking, Sleep, Men

  Chaim Potok (2016). “The Chosen”, p.124, Simon and Schuster

  9 Copy quote

• A word is worth one coin, silence is worth two

  Chaim Potok

  Two, Silence, Coins

  Chaim Potok (2016). “The Chosen”, p.410, Simon and Schuster

  8 Copy quote

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

  Chaim Potok

  True Friend, Two, People

  Chaim Potok (2016). “The Chosen”, p.92, Simon and Schuster

  12 Copy quote

• The span of a man's life - that is nothing. But what a man makes of that span - that is something. A man must make his own meaning for life. Meaning is not automatically given to life.

  Chaim Potok

  Men, Meaning Of Life, Given

  12 Copy quote

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

  Chaim Potok

  Art, Vision, Form

  Chaim Potok (2009). “My Name Is Asher Lev”, p.316, Anchor

  5 Copy quote

• All beginnings are hard.

  Chaim Potok

  Hard

  14 Copy quote

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

  Chaim Potok

  Waste, Made, Contribution

  Chaim Potok (2016). “The Chosen”, p.165, Simon and Schuster

  10 Copy quote

• Every man who has shown the world the way to beauty, to true culture, has been a rebel, a 'universal' without patriotism, without home, who has found his people everywhere.

  Chaim Potok

  Home, Men, People

  Chaim Potok (1984). “My Name is Asher Lev”, Fawcett

  23 Copy quote

• A man is born into this world with only a tiny spark of goodness in him. The spark is God, it is the soul; the rest is ugliness and evil, a shell. The spark must be guarded like a treasure, it must be nurtured, it must be fanned into flame. It must learn to seek out other sparks, it must dominate the shell. Anything can be a shell, Reuven. Anything. Indifference, laziness, brutality, and genius. Yes, even a great mind can be a shell and choke the spark.

  Chaim Potok

  Men, Flames, Evil

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  Chaim Potok

  Fruit, Bears, Seeds

  Chaim Potok (1984). “My Name is Asher Lev”, Fawcett

  7 Copy quote

• …everything has a past. Everything – a person, an object, a word, everything. If you don’t know the past, you can’t understand the present and plan properly for the future.

  Chaim Potok

  Past, Plans, Persons

  Chaim Potok (2010). “Davita's Harp”, p.10, Ballantine Books

  11 Copy quote

• Literature presents you with alternate mappings of the human experience. You see that the experiences of other people and other cultures are as rich, coherent, and troubled as your own experiences. They are as beset with suffering as yours. Literature is a kind of legitimate voyeurism through the keyhole of language where you really come to know other people's lives--their anguish, their loves, their passions. Often you discover that once you dive into those lives and get below the surface, the veneer, there is a real closeness.

  Chaim Potok

  Real, Passion, Other Cultures

  13 Copy quote

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

  Chaim Potok

  Book, Revising, Written

  4 Copy quote

• We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. So it may be asked what value is there to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much, if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye?...I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing; but the eye that blinks, that is something.

  Chaim Potok

  Pain, Mean, Eye

  "The Chosen" by Chaim Potok, (p. 217), 1967.

  14 Copy quote

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

  Chaim Potok

  Meaningful, Art, Doubt

  Chaim Potok (2003). “My Name Is Asher Lev”, Anchor

  17 Copy quote

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