Chaim Potok
Chaim Potok
Chaim Potokwas an American Jewish author and rabbi. Potok is most famous for his first book The Chosen, which was listed on The New York Times’ best seller list for 39 weeks and sold more than 3,400,000 copies...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth17 February 1929
CityBuffalo, NY
CountryUnited States of America
art evil good-art
I do not know what evil is when it comes to art. I only know what is good art and what is bad art.
artist firsts individual
... an artist is a person first. He is an individual. If there is no person, there is no artist.
meaningful art doubt
I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art.
art special way
Art is whether or not there is a scream in him wanting to get out in a special way.
differences making-a-difference ifs
Oh, it makes a difference, I thought. And if it doesn't make a difference you will make it make a difference.
real passion other-cultures
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.
reading media people
But today we become aware of other readings of the human experience very quickly because of the media and the speed with which people travel the planet.
writing fiction shapes
A non-fiction writer pretty much has the shape of the figure in front of him or her and goes about refining it. A work of non-fiction is not as difficult to write as a work of fiction, but it's not as satisfying in the end.
people different use
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.
eye men long
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.
giving trouble give-me
Each work seems to give me the most trouble at the time I'm working on it.
people giving pieces
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.
self needs gothic
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.
drinking sleep men
He taught them that the purpose of a man is to make his life holy--every aspect of his life: eating, drinking praying, sleeping. God is everywhere, he told them, and if it seems at times that He is hidden from us, it is only because we have not yet learned to seek Him correctly.