Quote

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

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
Lives
Periods
Use
Materials
Certainly
Think
Creativity
Thinking
Close
People
Serious
Period
Modern
Material
Heard
Writers

More quotes by Chaim Potok

Image
We need to listen to one another.
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
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
Art is whether or not there is a scream in him wanting to get out in a special way.
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
Each work seems to give me the most trouble at the time I'm working on it.
Chaim Potok
Image
A writer is a strange instrument of our species, a harp of sorts, fine-tuned to the dark contradictions of life.
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
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
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
Image
... an artist is a person first. He is an individual. If there is no person, there is no artist.
Chaim Potok
Image
Each generation thinks it fights new battles. But the battles are the same. Only the people are different.
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
… 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
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
Image
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
Image
Honest differences of opinion should never be permitted to destroy a friendship.
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
Two people who are true friends are like two bodies with one soul
Chaim Potok
Image
A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life.
Chaim Potok