Chaim Potok
Chaim Potok
Chaim Potokwas an American Jewish author and rabbi. Potok is most famous for his first book The Chosen, which was listed on The New York Times’ best seller list for 39 weeks and sold more than 3,400,000 copies...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth17 February 1929
CityBuffalo, NY
CountryUnited States of America
reading order alive
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.
religious fiction tradition
To the extent that I come from a deeply religious tradition and have been contending with those beginnings all of my life - that constitutes the subject of much of my early fiction.
passion winning men
In our time ... a man whose enemies are faceless bureaucrats almost never wins. It is our equivalent to the anger of the gods in ancient times. But those gods you must understand were far more imaginative than our tiny bureaucrats. They spoke from mountaintops not from tiny airless offices. They rode clouds. They were possessed of passion. They had voices and names. Six thousand years of civilization have brought us to this.
have-faith torah not-afraid
I have faith in the Torah. I am not afraid of truth.
men given blink-of-an-eye
A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life.
beautiful hurt pain
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.
fighting thinking people
Each generation thinks it fights new battles. But the battles are the same. Only the people are different.
men meaning-of-life given
The span of a man's life - that is nothing. But what a man makes of that span - that is something. A man must make his own meaning for life. Meaning is not automatically given to life.
writing half six
I don't work on my Sabbath. I write five-and-a-half or six days a week.
art evil good-art
I do not know what evil is when it comes to art. I only know what is good art and what is bad art.
differences lost-friendship honest
Honest differences of opinion should never be permitted to destroy a friendship.
tea happy-things afternoon-tea
Come, let us have some tea and continue to talk about happy things.
dark strange contradiction
A writer is a strange instrument of our species, a harp of sorts, fine-tuned to the dark contradictions of life.
artist firsts individual
... an artist is a person first. He is an individual. If there is no person, there is no artist.