Quote

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

Chaim Potok

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Instrument
Instruments
Species
Harp
Writer
Tuned
Fine
Harps
Strange
Contradictions
Dark
Sorts
Life
Contradiction

More quotes by Chaim Potok

Image
... an artist is a person first. He is an individual. If there is no person, there is no artist.
Chaim Potok
Image
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
Image
Each work seems to give me the most trouble at the time I'm working on it.
Chaim Potok
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Two people who are true friends are like two bodies with one soul
Chaim Potok
Image
I won't talk to you about my family and you won't talk to me about yours. Family talk is either boring or self-pitying. Or it's Gothic, like a Faulkner novel. Who needs to talk about it? It's enough to live it.
Chaim Potok
Image
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
Image
All of us grow up in particular realities - a home, family, a clan, a small town, a neighborhood. Depending upon how we're brought up, we are either deeply aware of the particular reading of reality into which we are born, or we are peripherally aware of it.
Chaim Potok
Image
I think most serious writers, certainly in the modern period, use their own lives or the lives of people close to them or lives they have heard about as the raw material for their creativity.
Chaim Potok
Image
A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life.
Chaim Potok
Image
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
Image
… 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
Image
Something that is yours forever is never precious
Chaim Potok
Image
It is impossible to fuse totally with a culture for which you feel a measure of antagonism.
Chaim Potok
Image
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