Chaim Potok
My name is Asher Lev... I am a traitor, an apostate, a self-hater, an inflicter of shame upon my family, my friends, my people; also, I am a mocker of ideas sacred to Christians, a blasphemous manipulator of modes and forms revered by Gentiles for two thousand years.Collection: Christian
I have faith in the Torah. I am not afraid of truth.Collection: Have Faith
Reuven 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.Collection: Teacher
I 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.Collection: Views
Oh, it makes a difference, I thought. And if it doesn't make a difference you will make it make a difference.Collection: Differences
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.Collection: Self
In Russia I went to a great yeshiva, and in America I work in a carnival.Collection: Russia
I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art.Collection: Meaningful
Honest differences of opinion should never be permitted to destroy a friendship.Collection: Differences
It is when you are angry that you must watch how you talk.Collection: Watches
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.Collection: Men
We need to listen to one another.Collection: Inspirational
... an artist is a person first. He is an individual. If there is no person, there is no artist.Collection: Artist
As you grow older you will discover that the most important things that will happen to you will often come as a result of silly things, as you call them --"ordinary things" is a better expression. That is the way the world is.Collection: Life
A writer is a strange instrument of our species, a harp of sorts, fine-tuned to the dark contradictions of life.Collection: Dark
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.Collection: Beautiful
… the world will indulge you just so long Asher Lev. Then it will stop. You will simply have to grow accustomed to that truth.Collection: Long
I do not know what evil is when it comes to art. I only know what is good art and what is bad art.Collection: Art
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.Collection: People
In our time ... a man whose enemies are faceless bureaucrats almost never wins. It is our equivalent to the anger of the gods in ancient times. But those gods you must understand were far more imaginative than our tiny bureaucrats. They spoke from mountaintops not from tiny airless offices. They rode clouds. They were possessed of passion. They had voices and names. Six thousand years of civilization have brought us to this.Collection: Passion
I 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!"Collection: Pain
It's not a pretty world, Papa.' 'I've noticed,' my father said softly.Collection: Father