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

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
Permitted
Destroy
Friendship
Differences
Honest
Opinion
Never

More quotes by Chaim Potok

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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
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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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Each work seems to give me the most trouble at the time I'm working on it.
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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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
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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
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Come, let us have some tea and continue to talk about happy things.
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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… 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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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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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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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
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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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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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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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Two people who are true friends are like two bodies with one soul
Chaim Potok
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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
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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 generation thinks it fights new battles. But the battles are the same. Only the people are different.
Chaim Potok
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... an artist is a person first. He is an individual. If there is no person, there is no artist.
Chaim Potok