Quotes from Chaim Potok

One derives great moral strength from a cup of coffee, I said.

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.

Go to sleep, Asher. You've had a difficult day." "A difficult day? I didn't do a thing all day!" "For you, my husband, that is the most difficult kind of day you can have.

A word is worth one coin, silence is worth two

Disorder and frequent sorrow the mulch for creativity.

Do you know what I don't understand about that ball game? I don't understand why I wanted to kill you.

Every artist is a man who has freed himself from his family, his nation, his race. 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.

You don't want to make mistakes with people. Sometimes when you make a mistake you lose a human soul.

He became angry. "It should read 'those who fear ideas,' not 'those who fear God.' There are times when those who fear God make themselves very unpleasant as human beings.

a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something.

I have always had this sense of books as lined up and waiting, patiently waiting, for people to find them;

Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way! Thou art the Potter and I am the clay.

In Russia I went to a great yeshiva, and in America I work in a carnival.

Only one who has mastered a tradition has a right to attempt to add to it or rebel against it.

Williamsburg was stifling, narcotized by the heat.

When the alternative is possible disaster, a man must gamble.

Good-bye, Davita. Be discontented with the world. But be respectful at the same time.

The fact is that gossip, rumors, mythmaking, and news stories are not appropriate vehicles for the communication of nuances of truth, those subtle tonalities that are often the truly crucial elements in a causal chain.

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,.

It's always easier to learn something than to use what you've learned.

Without stories there is nothing. Stories are the world's memory. The past is erased without stories.

How should a Jew feel? There we went through the seven gates of hell for matzos. Here I stand in matzos over my head. So how should a Jew feel? You are an angel of God, and the Rebbe, he should live and be well, the Rebbe made miracles and wonders for me. At night, I tell myself it is a dream and I am afraid to wake up. If it is a dream, better I should not wake up, better I should die in my sleep.

I do not know what evil is when it comes to art. I only know what is good art and what is bad art.

Surely all art is the result of having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, to where no one can go any further. RAINER MARIA RILKE