My Name Is Asher Lev
Chaim Potok
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Something that is yours forever is never precious”
“Art is whether or not there is a scream in him wanting to get out in a special way.”
“It's not a pretty world, Papa.' 'I've noticed,' my father said softly.”
“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.”
“Seeds must be sown everywhere. Only some will bear fruit. But there would not be the fruit from the few had the many not been sown.”
“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.”
“I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art.”
“A life is measured by how it is lived for the sake of heaven.”
“... an artist is a person first. He is an individual. If there is no person, there is no artist.”
“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.”
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