A writer is a strange instrument of our species, a harp of sorts, fine-tuned to the dark contradictions of life. Chaim Potok More Quotes by Chaim Potok More Quotes From Chaim Potok 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. Chaim Potok dimensions quality silence Art is whether or not there is a scream in him wanting to get out in a special way. Chaim Potok special way art Something that is yours forever is never precious Chaim Potok forever 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. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life. Chaim Potok eye men long I looked at my right hand, the hand with which I painted. There was power in that hand. Power to create and destroy. Power to bring pleasure and pain. Power to amuse and horrify. There was in that hand the demonic and the divine at one and the same time. The demonic and the divine were two aspects of the same force. Creation was demonic and divine. Creativity was demonic and divine. I was demonic and divine. Chaim Potok creativity pain hands 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. Chaim Potok eye world art 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. Chaim Potok home men people The span of a man's life - that is nothing. But what a man makes of that span - that is something. A man must make his own meaning for life. Meaning is not automatically given to life. Chaim Potok meaning-of-life given men If a person has a contribution to make, he must make it in public. If learning is not made public, it is a waste. Chaim Potok contribution waste made A man is born into this world with only a tiny spark of goodness in him. The spark is God, it is the soul; the rest is ugliness and evil, a shell. The spark must be guarded like a treasure, it must be nurtured, it must be fanned into flame. It must learn to seek out other sparks, it must dominate the shell. Anything can be a shell, Reuven. Anything. Indifference, laziness, brutality, and genius. Yes, even a great mind can be a shell and choke the spark. Chaim Potok flames evil men I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art. Chaim Potok doubt meaningful art 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. Chaim Potok other-cultures passion real We need to listen to one another. Chaim Potok inspirational needs All beginnings are hard. Chaim Potok hard Truth has to be given in riddles. People can't take truth if it comes charging at them like a bull. The bull is always killed. You have to give people the truth in a riddle, hide it so they go looking for it and find it piece by piece; that way they learn to live with it. Chaim Potok pieces giving people No one knows he is fortunate until he becomes unfortunate, that's the way the world is. Chaim Potok unfortunate way world …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. Chaim Potok plans persons past A life is measured by how it is lived for the sake of heaven. Chaim Potok sake life-is heaven ... an artist is a person first. He is an individual. If there is no person, there is no artist. Chaim Potok individual artist firsts 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. Chaim Potok pain eye mean
