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
life silly expression
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.
reality years two
Two hundred or more years ago most people on the planet were never aware of any reality other than the one into which they were brought up.
father papa world
It's not a pretty world, Papa.' 'I've noticed,' my father said softly.
long world grows
… the world will indulge you just so long Asher Lev. Then it will stop. You will simply have to grow accustomed to that truth.
past plans persons
…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.
men quality may
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.
pain mean eye
We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. So it may be asked what value is there to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye? . . .I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something.
family growing-up reading
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.
heaven sake life-is
A life is measured by how it is lived for the sake of heaven.
writing mean thinking
I think the hardest part of writing is revising. And by that I mean the following: A novelist has to create the piece of marble and then chip away to find the figure in it.
hard
All beginnings are hard.
art eye world
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.
meaningful art doubt
I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art.
pain creativity hands
I looked at my right hand, the hand with which I painted. There was power in that hand. Power to create and destroy. Power to bring pleasure and pain. Power to amuse and horrify. There was in that hand the demonic and the divine at one and the same time. The demonic and the divine were two aspects of the same force. Creation was demonic and divine. Creativity was demonic and divine. I was demonic and divine.