Chaim Potok Quotes

31 Sourced Quotes

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

Chaim Potok
I went away and cried to the Master of the Universe, "What have you done to me? A mind like this I need for a son? A heart I need for a son, a soul I need for a son, compassion I want from my son, righteousness, mercy, strength to suffer and carry pain, that I want from my son, not a mind without a soul!"

Chaim Potok
You have to want to listen to it, and then you can hear it. It has a strange, beautiful texture. It doesn't always talk. Sometimes-sometimes it cries, and you can hear the pain of the world in it. It hurts to listen to it then. But you have to.

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

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

Chaim Potok
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.

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

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

Chaim Potok
[Danny] laughed once and said, 'That man is such an ignoramus, Father.' I was angry. 'Look into his soul,' I said. 'Stand inside his soul and see the world through his eyes. You will know the pain he feels because of his ignorance, and you will not laugh.' He was bewildered and hurt. The nightmares he began to have.... But he learned to find answers for himself. He suffered and learned to listen to the suffering of others. In the silence between us, he began to hear the world crying.

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

Chaim Potok
It was senseless, as— I held my breath, feeling myself shiver with fear— as Billy's blindness was senseless.

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

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

Chaim Potok
It's always easier to learn something than to use what you've learned.... You're alone when you're learning. But you always use it on other people. It's different when there are other people involved.

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

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

Chaim Potok
Honest differences of opinion should never be permitted to destroy a friendship.

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

Chaim Potok
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
Reuven, as you grow older you will discover that the most important things that will happen to you will often come as a result of silly things, as you call them— "ordinary things" is a better expression. That is the way the world is.

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

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

Chaim Potok
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
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
I will go wherever the truth leads me. It is secular scholarship, Rebbe; it is not the scholarship of tradition. In secular scholarship there are no boundaries and no permanently fixed views. Lurie, if the Torah cannot go out into your world of scholarship and return stronger, then we are all fools and charlatans. I have faith in the Torah. I am not afraid of truth.

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

Chaim Potok