Quotes by Chaim Potok

“Something that is yours forever is never precious”

“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 a dimension all its own. It talks to me sometimes. I feel myself aliv...”

“Reuven listen to me. The Talmud says that a person should do two things for himself. One is to acquire a teacher. Do you remember the other.""Choose a friend," I said."Yes. You know what a friend i...”

“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 look...”

“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,...”

“...a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something.”

“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 inv...”

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

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

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

“Human beings do not live forever, Reuven. 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. Ther...”

“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.”

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

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

“For all the pain you suffered, my mama. For all the torment of your past and future years, my mama. For all the anguish this picture of pain will cause you. For the unspeakable mystery that brings ...”

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

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

“How can we expect to know everything about God?"He looked at me, his eyes narrowing."I call that ambiguity," I said. "Riddles, puzzles, double meanings, lost possibilities, the dark side to the lig...”

“Did I know that the reason Hitler had been able to slaughter six million Jews without too much complaint from the world was that for two thousand years the world had been taught that Jews, not Roma...”

“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, ...”