Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev
14 quotes
"An artist is a person first."
"Did 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?"
"Art is whether or not there is a scream in him wanting to get out in a special way."
"I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art."
"... an artist is a person first. He is an individual. If there is no person, there is no artist."
"Art is a person's private vision expressed in aesthetic forms."
"It's not a pretty world, Papa.''I've noticed,' my father said softly."
"Millions of people can draw. Art is whether there is a scream in you wanting to get out in a special way."
"It was no joy waking up after a dream about that man. He left a taste of thunder in my mouth."
"How should a Jew feel? There we went through the seven gates of hell for matzos. Here I stand in matzos over my head. So how should a Jew feel? You are an angel of God, and the Rebbe, he should live and be well, the Rebbe made miracles and wonders for me. At night, I tell myself it is a dream and I am afraid to wake up. If it is a dream, better I should not wake up, better I should die in my sleep."
"Every artist is a man who has freed himself from his family, his nation, his race. 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."
"An artist has got to get acquainted with himself just as much as he can. It is no easy job, for it is not a present-day habit of humanity."
"> Why does everything that lives have to die?< So life would be precious, Asher. Something that is yours forever, is never precious."
"I walked the streets and tasted the golden sun that lay across the city."