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… 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

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Chaim Potok
Age: 73 †
Born: 1929
Born: February 17
Died: 2002
Died: July 23
Author
Bible Translator
Novelist
Playwright
Rabbi
Screenwriter
Translator
Writer
The Bronx
New York City
Herman Harold Potok
Stop
Grows
Truth
Asher
Long
Indulge
World
Accustomed
Grow
Simply

More quotes by Chaim Potok

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If I had a plot that was all set in advance, why would I want go through the agony of writing the novel? A novel is a kind of exploration and discovery, for me at any rate.
Chaim Potok
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My name is Asher Lev... I am a traitor, an apostate, a self-hater, an inflicter of shame upon my family, my friends, my people also, I am a mocker of ideas sacred to Christians, a blasphemous manipulator of modes and forms revered by Gentiles for two thousand years.
Chaim Potok
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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
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Two people who are true friends are like two bodies with one soul
Chaim Potok
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Something that is yours forever is never precious
Chaim Potok
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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
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It is impossible to fuse totally with a culture for which you feel a measure of antagonism.
Chaim Potok
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Each work seems to give me the most trouble at the time I'm working on it.
Chaim Potok
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A writer is a strange instrument of our species, a harp of sorts, fine-tuned to the dark contradictions of life.
Chaim Potok
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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
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…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
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Each generation thinks it fights new battles. But the battles are the same. Only the people are different.
Chaim Potok
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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
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I get up around 6:30. I work from about 8:00 to 1:00, take a break for lunch, work again until about 5:00, and then go for a long walk and have dinner. Then, if my wife and I have no previous plans, we decide what to do for the evening.
Chaim Potok
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A book is sent out into the world, and there is no way of fully anticipating the responses it will elicit. Consider the responses called forth by the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare - let alone contemporary poetry or a modern novel.
Chaim Potok
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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
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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.
Chaim Potok
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A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life.
Chaim Potok
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Art is whether or not there is a scream in him wanting to get out in a special way.
Chaim Potok
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We need to listen to one another.
Chaim Potok