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.
…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.
Something that is yours forever is never precious
No one knows he is fortunate until he becomes unfortunate, that's the way the world is.
Two people who are true friends are like two bodies with one soul
Art is whether or not there is a scream in him wanting to get out in a special way.
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.
It's not a pretty world, Papa.' 'I've noticed,' my father said softly.
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
I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art.
A life is measured by how it is lived for the sake of heaven.
If a person has a contribution to make, he must make it in public. If learning is not made public, it is a waste.
Every man who has shown the world the way to beauty, to true culture, has been a rebel, a 'universal' without patriotism, without home who has found his people everywhere.
Oh, it makes a difference, I thought. And if it doesn't make a difference you will make it make a difference.
It is when you are angry that you must watch how you talk.
... an artist is a person first. He is an individual. If there is no person, there is no artist.
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.
Art is a person's private vision expressed in aesthetic forms.
… the world will indulge you just so long Asher Lev. Then it will stop. You will simply have to grow accustomed to that truth.
A choice tells the world what is most important to a human being. When a man has a choice to make he chooses what is most important to him, and that choice tells the world what kind of a man he is.
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.
Honest differences of opinion should never be permitted to destroy a friendship, he told me. "Haven't you learned that yet, Reuven?
It is strange how ideas can float about and be ignored until they are put into a book. A book can be a weapon...
Millions of people can draw. Art is whether there is a scream in you wanting to get out in a special way.
Did he really believe God wrote stories that were open to one explanation only? A story that knew but one explanation could hardly be interesting and was certainly not worth the trouble of remembering.
When the alternative is possible disaster, a man must gamble.
The silence became unreal and seemed suddenly filled with a noise of its own, the noise of a too long silence.
...a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something.
One derives great moral strength from a cup of coffee," I said.
Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way! Thou art the Potter and I am the clay.
