Old Men at Midnight Quotes

“I cannot have gone through what I went through and have lost what I lost if it’s all meaningless.”
― Chaim Potok, Old Men at Midnight: Stories

“Every day learns from the one that went before, but no day teaches the one that follows. Well,”
― Chaim Potok, Old Men at Midnight: Stories

“Without stories there is nothing. Stories are the world’s memory. The past is erased without stories.”
― Chaim Potok, Old Men at Midnight: Stories

“A chi servono le storie di un ennesimo ebreo?"
"Servono a me. Senza storie non esiste nulla. Le storie sono la memoria del mondo. Senza storie il passato viene cancellato".”
― Chaim Potok, Old Men at Midnight: Stories

“If conquest is the only reason for a war, conquest from which only the ruler stands to gain, then people should refuse to fight. If, however, a war is to be fought for the defense of one’s family and property, then men should fight with all their heart and might.”
― Chaim Potok, Old Men at Midnight: Stories

“Life connects us, Benjamin, not artifice.”
― Chaim Potok, Old Men at Midnight: Stories

“A ram comes always as an astonishment. Do you know what a ram is, Benjamin? R-A-M. A random act of menschlichkeit.”
― Chaim Potok, Old Men at Midnight: Stories

“And now you’ll be able to sail right through to the end.” “I’ve already written the end. It was the beginning I couldn’t write.” “The story you just told me is part of your beginning?” “It is the myself that predates what I am now.”
― Chaim Potok, Old Men at Midnight: Stories

“There is an old Russian saying: When fingernails are being pulled out in Moscow, fingers are being chopped off in the provinces. That saying one can take at full value.”
― Chaim Potok, Old Men at Midnight: Stories

“DW: Some critics have written that they don’t admire your so-called simple style. You have contended that your writing is a result of much rewriting and much revision and is deliberate. CP: The style is simplicity for the sake of complexity. Whoever feels that it is a “simple style” has to look into it and find the right way. Of course the style has become over the years much more complex and much more simple. Two fundamental things about the novel continue to intrigue me and I think this is our gift to ourselves as far as this form is concerned. One is the handling of character, people. No other form can handle people in significant depth over long periods of time. No other form can move back and forth, in and out, nothing can move the way the novel can in terms of the dimension of time. People and time are what I think the novel is really all about and I think they are limitless.”
― Chaim Potok, Old Men at Midnight: Stories

“What is your dissertation, Ilana Davita?” “Babel and Camus: Twists of Fate and Faith. Babel’s The Red Cavalry and Camus’s The Stranger.”
― Chaim Potok, Old Men at Midnight: Stories

“Excuse me, you taught trope in Theresienstadt?”
― Chaim Potok, Old Men at Midnight: Stories