Severen Potok Quotes

What we are seeing is there is a lot of anger out there about the failure of the government to resolve the immigration crisis. ~ Mark Potok

I sat near a window in our little synagogue and looked out at the large church and wondered how a statue whose face was so full of love could be worshipped by someone whose heart was so full of hate. ~ Chaim Potok

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

It's my world, best friend. And I haven't seen anything outside that's better. ~ Chaim Potok

It is strange how ideas can float about and be ignored until they are put into a book. A book can be a weapon ... ~ Chaim Potok

A choice tells the world what is most important to a human being. When a man has a choice to make he chooses what is most important to him, and that choice tells the world what kind of a man he is. ~ Chaim Potok

He should be careful of the influence of those with whom he consorts, and he runs a great risk in becoming a member of a large society, for large bodies tend toward the leveling of individuality to a common consent, the forming and adherence to a creed. ~ Chaim Potok

I walked the streets and tasted the golden sun that lay across the city. ~ Chaim Potok

It's not a pretty world, Papa.'
'I've noticed,' my father said softly. ~ Chaim Potok

Williamsburg was stifling, narcotized by the heat. ~ Chaim Potok

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

It is impossible to fuse totally with a culture for which you feel a measure of antagonism. ~ Chaim Potok

To the extent that I come from a deeply religious tradition and have been contending with those beginnings all of my life - that constitutes the subject of much of my early fiction. ~ Chaim Potok

The 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. ~ Chaim Potok

Little Asher Lev was the juncture point of two significant family lines, the apex, as it were, of a triangle seminal with Jewish potentiality and freighted with Jewish responsibility. But he was also born with a gift. ~ Chaim Potok

How 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

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. ~ Chaim Potok

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

All of us grow up in particular realities - a home, family, a clan, a small town, a neighborhood. Depending upon how we're brought up, we are either deeply aware of the particular reading of reality into which we are born, or we are peripherally aware of it. ~ Chaim Potok

I'm not altogether certain that a fundamentalism of necessity has to argue that it is the only reading of the human experience in order to stay alive. ~ Chaim Potok

No one knows he is fortunate until he becomes unfortunate, that's the way the world is. ~ Chaim Potok

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

Hate speech is in the ear of the beholder. ~ Mark Potok

Well, one hopes that if you're really related to the core of your particular culture, you have profound commitments to it, and that you are aware of how much you can strain it before you do violence to its essential nature. ~ Chaim Potok

God is merciful in what He sometimes lets us forget. ~ Chaim Potok

Each generation thinks it fights new battles. But the battles are the same. Only the people are different. ~ Chaim Potok

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

What I have in advance are people I want to write about and a problem or problems that I see those people encountering and that I want to explore - it all proceeds sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, and scene by scene. ~ Chaim Potok

But it would have made me a whore to leave it incomplete. It would have made it easier to leave future work incomplete. It would have made it more and more difficult to draw upon that additional aching surge of effort that is always the difference between integrity and deceit in a created work. I would not be the whore to my own existence. Can you understand that? I would not be the whore to my own existence. ~ Chaim Potok

And yet there are some magnificent things from Freud, profound insights into the nature of man. ~ Chaim Potok

I'm constantly revising. Once the book is written and typed, I go through the entire draft again. ~ Chaim Potok

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. ~ Chaim Potok

Reuven, I did not want my Daniel to become like my brother, may he rest in peace. Better I should have had no son at all than to have a brilliant son who had no soul. I looked at my Daniel when he was four years old, and I said to myself, How will I teach this mind what it is to have a soul? How will I teach this mind to understand pain? How will I teach it to want to take on another person's suffering? How will I do this and not lose my son, my precious son whom I love as I love the Master of the Universe Himself? How will I do this and not cause my son, God forbid, to abandon the Master of the Universe and His Commandments? How could I teach my son the way I was taught by my father and not drive him away from Torah? Because this is America, Reuven. This is not Europe. It is an open world here. Here there are libraries and books and schools. Here there are great universities that do not concern themselves with how many Jewish students they have. I did not want to drive my son away from God, but I did not want him to grow up a mind without a soul. I knew already when he was a boy that I could not prevent his mind from going to the world for knowledge. I knew in my heart that it might prevent him from taking my place. But I had to prevent it from driving him away completely from the Master of the Universe. And I had to make certain his soul would the soul of a tzaddik no matter what he did with his life. ~ Chaim Potok

I think the hardest part of writing is revising. And by that I mean the following: A novelist has to create the piece of marble and then chip away to find the figure in it. ~ Chaim Potok

He 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

You 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