Quotes from Chaim Potok

But it would have made me a whore to leave it incomplete. It would have made it easier to leave future work incomplete. It would have made it more and more difficult to draw upon that additional aching surge of effort that is always the difference between integrity and deceit in a created work. I would not be the whore to my own existence. Can you understand that? I would not be the whore to my own existence.

Oh, it makes a difference, I thought. And if it doesn't make a difference you will make it make a difference.

Come, let us have some tea and continue to talk about happy things.

There is in my work a very strong religious foreground and background. In the later work some of that tends to diminish, but it's certainly present in the early work.

Each work seems to give me the most trouble at the time I'm working on it.

It is inconceivable to me that a million or three million or half a million human beings will think and feel precisely the same way on any single subject.

Well, one hopes that if you're really related to the core of your particular culture, you have profound commitments to it, and that you are aware of how much you can strain it before you do violence to its essential nature.

Something that is yours forever is never precious.