My Name Is Asher Lev Quotes

“Something that is yours forever is never precious”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“Art is whether or not there is a scream in him wanting to get out in a special way.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“It's not a pretty world, Papa.'
'I've noticed,' my father said softly.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“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.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“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.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“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.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“A life is measured by how it is lived for the sake of heaven.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“... an artist is a person first. He is an individual. If there is no person, there is no artist.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“Art is a person's private vision expressed in aesthetic forms.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“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, My Name Is Asher Lev

“Oh, it makes a difference, I thought. And if it doesn't make a difference you will make it make a difference.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“> Why does everything that lives have to die?
< So life would be precious, Asher. Something that is yours forever, is never precious.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“Millions of people can draw. Art is whether there is a scream in you wanting to get out in a special way.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“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.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“… the world will indulge you just so long Asher Lev. Then it will stop. You will simply have to grow accustomed to that truth.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“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.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“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.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“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.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“Become a great artist. That is the only way to justify what you are doing to everyone's life.'... I did not understand what he meant. I did not feel I had to justify anything... I did not want to paint in order to justify anything, I wanted to paint because I wanted to paint. I wanted to paint the same way my father wanted to travel and work for the Rebbe. My father worked for Torah. I worked for - what? How could I explain it? For beauty? No. Many of the pictures I painted were not beautiful. For what, then? For a truth I did not know how to put into words. For truth I could only bring to life by means of color and line and texture and form.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“The fact is that gossip, rumors, mythmaking, and news stories are not appropriate vehicles for the communication of nuances of truth, those subtle tonalities that are often the truly crucial elements in a causal chain.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“I do not know what evil is when it comes to art. I only know what is good art and what is bad art.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“Those mornings, the beach was my synagogue and the waves and gulls were audience to my prayers. I stood on the beach and felt wind-blown sprays of ocean on my face, and I prayed. And sometimes the words seemed more appropriate to this beach than to the synagogue on my street.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“Only one who has mastered a tradition has a right to attempt to add to it or rebel against it.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“I walked the streets and tasted the golden sun that lay across the city.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“I will tell you what my father, may he rest in peace, once told me. 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. Do you understand, my Asher?”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“And it seemed to me that I was closer to him during those early months of his absence than at any other time of my life.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“I...thought the street was crying and wondered how I could paint the street crying. I thought I had said something like that to myself before, but I could not remember when or where it might have been. The street is crying, I thought, and I'm sitting here. It's my street and I can't draw it. I want to paint it, I have to paint it while it's crying, and why am I sitting here?”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“Oh, if I could paint this, I thought. Ribbono Shel Olom, if I could paint this world, this clean world of rain and patterns on glass, and trees on my street, and people beneath the trees. I would even paint and draw pain and suffering if I could paint and draw the other, too. I would paint the rain as tears and I would paint the rain as waters of purification. What do they want from me? Ribbono Shel Olom, it's Your gift. Why don't You show them it's Your gift?”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“You can do anything you want to do. What is rare is this actual wanting to do a specific thing: wanting it so much that you are practically blind to all other things, that nothing else will satisfy you,.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev