A collection of sayings and quotations by Chaim Potok on silence, literature, value, planning, life, love, silence, soul, friends, art, truth, Jewish, Judaism and integrity.
57 Great Quotes By Chaim Potok, The Renowned Jewish Rabbi And Author
Herman Harold Potok, who is better known as Chaim Potok, is a Jewish rabbi and author, who has risen to prominence not only as a religious figurehead but also as a bestselling novelist. Potok went through an orthodox Jewish education and aspired to be a writer right from the time that he was a teenager. In fact, he had sent a manuscript to the well-known magazine 'The Atlantic Monthly' when he was only 17. He graduated with a degree in English literature from Yeshiva University and during that time he was a regular contributor of stories to the university magazine. He attended the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and became a rabbi at the end of his 4 year course. He also served as the editor of Conservative Judaism magazine and also become the chief editor of Jewish Publication Society. As a novelist, he rose to prominence with the novel ‘The Chosen’ published in 1967 and it went to become a bestseller, selling millions of copies worldwide. Potok’s other notable works include ‘The Promise’, ‘Davita’s Harp’, ‘The Book of Lights’, ‘Jewish Ethics’, ‘The Gift of Asher Lev’ and ‘I Am The Clay’ among others. Here is a collection of Chaim Potok quotes on silence, literature, value, planning, life, love, silence, soul, friends, art, truth, Jewish, Judaism and integrity.
…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.
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.
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.
... an artist is a person first. He is an individual. If there is no person, there is no artist.
Chaim Potok
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.
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.
Chaim Potok
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.
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.
And then I was crying too, crying with Danny, silently, for his pain and for the years of his suffering, knowing that I loved him, and not knowing whether I hated or loved the long, anguished years of his life.
You can do anything you want to do. What is rare is this actual wanting to do a specific thing: wanting it so much that you are practically blind to all other things, that nothing else will satisfy you,.
A person must know who he is. A person must understand himself, improve himself, learn his weaknesses in order to overcome them. It is hard for a person to understand his own weaknesses.
Chaim Potok
They become angry and ugly and they fight anything that's a threat to them. We have to learn how to fight back without hurting them too much.
Chaim Potok
I do not know what evil is when it comes to art. I only know what is good art and what is bad art.
