02c. 1965 ADTruth 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 / quote ↗
03c. 1965 ADI will go wherever the truth leads me. It is secular scholarship, Rebbe; it is not the scholarship of tradition. In secular scholarship there are no boundaries and no permanently fixed views.”Lurie, if the Torah cannot go out into your world of scholarship and return stronger, then we are all fools and charlatans. I have faith in the Torah. I am not afraid of truth.Chaim Potok / quote ↗
04c. 1965 AD...a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something.Chaim Potok / quote ↗
05c. 1965 ADDid I know that the reason Hitler had been able to slaughter six million Jews without too much complaint from the world was that for two thousand years the world had been taught that Jews, not Romans, had killed that man?Chaim Potok / quote ↗
06c. 1965 ADReuven listen to me. The Talmud says that a person should do two things for himself. One is to acquire a teacher. Do you remember the other.""Choose a friend," I said."Yes. You know what a friend is, Reuven? A Greek philosopher said that two people who are true friends are like two bodies with one soul."I nodded."Reuven, if you can, make Danny Saunders your friend.""I like him a lot, abba.""No. Listen to me. I am not talking about only liking him. I am telling you to make him your friend and to let him make you his friend.Chaim Potok / quote ↗
08c. 1965 ADArt 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 / quote ↗
09c. 1965 ADArt is whether or not there is a scream in him wanting to get out in a special way.Chaim Potok / quote ↗
10c. 1965 ADI do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art.Chaim Potok / quote ↗
11c. 1965 ADFor 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.Chaim Potok / quote ↗
12c. 1965 AD... an artist is a person first. He is an individual. If there is no person, there is no artist.Chaim Potok / quote ↗
14c. 1965 ADHow can we expect to know everything about God?"He looked at me, his eyes narrowing."I call that ambiguity," I said. "Riddles, puzzles, double meanings, lost possibilities, the dark side to the light, the light side to the darkness, different perspectives on the same thing. Nothing in this whole world has only one side to it. Everything is like a kaleidoscope. That's what I'm trying to capture in my art. That's what I mean by ambiguity.Chaim Potok / quote ↗
15c. 1965 ADI went away and cried to the Master of the Universe, "What have you done to me? A mind like this I need for a son? A heart I need for a son, a soul I need for a son, compassion I want from my son, righteousness, mercy, strength to suffer and carry pain, that I want from my son, not a mind without a soul!Chaim Potok / quote ↗
16c. 1965 ADYou can listen to silence, Reuven. 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. It talks to me sometimes. I feel myself alive in it. It talks. And I can hear it....You have to want to listen to it, and then you can hear it. It has a strange, beautiful texture. It doesn't always talk. Sometimes - sometimes it cries, and you can hear the pain of the world in it. It hurts to listen to it then. But you have to.Chaim Potok / quote ↗
17c. 1965 ADIt's not a pretty world, Papa.''I've noticed,' my father said softly.Chaim Potok / quote ↗
18c. 1965 ADIt'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.Chaim Potok / quote ↗
19c. 1965 ADMillions of people can draw. Art is whether there is a scream in you wanting to get out in a special way.Chaim Potok / quote ↗
20c. 1965 ADHuman beings do not live forever, Reuven. 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. 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. It is hard work to fill one's life with meaning. That I do not think you understand yet. A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest when I am no longer here.Chaim Potok / quote ↗
21c. 1965 ADHe looked down at the books. There was a long silence. Then he raised his eyes and directed his gaze at Gershon, and Gershon did not look away. "I will tell you, Loran what is of importance is not that there may be nothing. We have always acknowledged that as a possibility. What is important is that if indeed there is nothing, then we should be prepared to make something out of the one thing we have left to us -- ourselves. I do not know what else to tell you, Loran. No one is in possession of all wisdom. No one." Gershon sat in silence, looking at Nathan Malkuson.Chaim Potok / quote ↗
22c. 1965 ADMy wife believes in it not one whit, but is scrupulous in its observance," said Charles Leiden, sipping from his glass. "A curious state of affairs, don't you think? We are kosher, Fermi probably attends synagogue, Albert believed in Spinoza's God and helped raise money for Israel, Teller may end up teaching in a Jewish parochial school one day, Szilard has the soul of a Jewish prophet. And we tinker with light and atomic bombs, with the energy of the universe. Do you wonder that the world doesn't know what to make of its Jews? No one is on more familiar terms with the heart of the insanity in the universe than is the Jew, and no one is more frenetic and untidy in the search for the an answer.Chaim Potok / quote ↗
23c. 1965 ADIt was no joy waking up after a dream about that man. He left a taste of thunder in my mouth.Chaim Potok / quote ↗
24c. 1965 AD…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 / quote ↗
