Quotessence
Home / Authors / Chaim Potok
Chaim Potok

Chaim Potok Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsPeopleWorldChosenMenWayArtPainPersonsTwoHumansKnowsSilenceThinkingBlink Of An EyeGivenLongSoulSufferingTiny

Famous Chaim Potok Quotes

“For all the pain you suffered, my mama. For all the torment of your past and future years, my mama. For all the anguish this picture of pain will cause you. For the unspeakable mystery that brings good fathers and sons into the world and lets a mother watch them tear at each other’s throats. For the Master of the Universe, whose suffering world I do not comprehend. For dreams of horror, for nights of waiting, for memories of death, for the love I have for you, for all the things I remember, and for all the things I should remember but have forgotten, for all these I created this painting—an observant Jew working on a crucifixion because there was no aesthetic mold in his own religious tradition into which he could pour a painting of ultimate anguish and torment.”

ArtPainSufferingPaintingPaintJewTormentJudaismJewishHasidic JudaismAsher LevHasidic
Book:My Name Is Asher Lev
Create image

“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.”

IfsWorldHumansMayMeanLongDoeEyePainSufferingValuesOur LivesLong TimeEternityChosenHuman LifeLong Time AgoBlinkBlink Of An Eye
Author:Chaim Potok
Create image

“Literature presents you with alternate mappings of the human experience. You see that the experiences of other people and other cultures are as rich, coherent, and troubled as your own experiences. They are as beset with suffering as yours. Literature is a kind of legitimate voyeurism through the keyhole of language where you really come to know other people's lives--their anguish, their loves, their passions. Often you discover that once you dive into those lives and get below the surface, the veneer, there is a real closeness.”

PeopleKnowsHumansKindRealSufferingCulturePassionLiteratureLanguageRichSurfaceAnguishHuman ExperienceClosenessOther CulturesVeneerMappingBelow The SurfaceKeyholes
Author:Chaim Potok
Create image