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The Gift of Asher Lev QUOTES

The Gift of Asher Lev QUOTES

1 " Truth has to be given in riddles. People can't take truth if it comes charging at them like a bull. The bull is always killed. You have to give people the truth in a riddle, hide it so they go looking for it and find it piece by piece; that way they learn to live with it. "

― Chaim Potok , The Gift of Asher Lev

2 " Art begins . . . when someone interprets, when someone sees the world through his own eyes. Art happens when what is seen becomes mixed with the inside of the person who is seeing it. "

― Chaim Potok , The Gift of Asher Lev

3 " Now I stand on the knoll before the grave of Jacob Kahn, the cypress tall against the blue morning sky and the wind warm on my face. It is the only sense left me, I hear him say. There are colors in the wind, Asher Lev. Find your demons again and return to your work. Colors wait for you in the wind. Things were too comfortable for you. An artist needs a broken world in order to have pieces to shape into art. Isn't that right, Asher Lev? Comfort is death to art. Asher Lev, artist. Asher Lev, troubler. Asher Lev, my future. His voice weaves through the wind, and I add to it the words of the psalmist, " 'Protect me, O God, for I seek refuge in You. I say to the Lord, Your are my benefactor; there is no one above You....' " The wind is red and black in the trembling cypress. "

― Chaim Potok , The Gift of Asher Lev

4 " Disorder and frequent sorrow the mulch for creativity. "

― Chaim Potok , The Gift of Asher Lev

5 " Go to sleep, Asher. You’ve had a difficult day.” “A difficult day? I didn’t do a thing all day!” “For you, my husband, that is the most difficult kind of day you can have. "

― Chaim Potok , The Gift of Asher Lev

6 " God is merciful in what He sometimes lets us forget. "

― Chaim Potok , The Gift of Asher Lev

7 " Weeks of longing and solitude: twin muses of creation. "

― Chaim Potok , The Gift of Asher Lev

8 " Surely all art is the result of having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, to where no one can go any further. RAINER MARIA RILKE "

― Chaim Potok , The Gift of Asher Lev

9 " What’s next from you? Paintingwise, I mean.” “I don’t know. I’m between things now.” “Dawn between things or dusk between things?” “I don’t know that, either. "

― Chaim Potok , The Gift of Asher Lev

10 " Man sees only between the blinks of his eyes. He does not know what the world is like during the blinks. He sees the world in pieces, in fragments. "

― Chaim Potok , The Gift of Asher Lev

11 " You paint it,” he responds. “You are a specialist in darkness.” I tell him, “I didn’t live through it.” He says, “We all lived through it, everyone; all of humanity lived through it. Was Picasso in Guernica? Did Guido Reni see with his own eyes the slaughter of little children in Bethlehem? "

― Chaim Potok , The Gift of Asher Lev

12 " Devorah tended to fill empty spaces with books: end tables, the tops of dressers, the edges of desks, on occasion even a chair. She would arrange and rearrange the books with exacting care, lining up the spines so none jutted out: sentinel rows of books. "

― Chaim Potok , The Gift of Asher Lev

13 " White is fearful to gaze upon for too long: it is the color of shrouds; it is all-color, the prism fused, undifferentiated, linked wave to wave and particle to particle. "

― Chaim Potok , The Gift of Asher Lev

14 " Truth has to be given in riddles. People can’t take truth if it comes charging at them like a bull. The bull is always killed, Lev. You have to give people the truth in a riddle, hide it so they go looking for it and find it piece by piece; that way they learn to live with it. "

― Chaim Potok , The Gift of Asher Lev

15 " God killed my little sister. That’s right, Lev. A little girl, suddenly sick and dead. Everything He touches is destroyed. Casagemas, Apollinaire, Eva, Max Jacob. How do you worship Him, Lev? He’s the true destroyer. Satan works out in the open, cards on the table. He gives it to you straight, no games. God plays at sweetness and goodness, and kills you. Who’s worse, Satan or God? Satan at least has the decency to show us his real face. So I pay God back with my paintings. "

― Chaim Potok , The Gift of Asher Lev

16 " The sadness grew within her until she seemed to exist only as a dark nimbus of melancholy, and even Max could no longer cheer her with his talk and his "

― Chaim Potok , The Gift of Asher Lev

17 " We have hurt you, yet you love us. We have exiled you, yet you are tied to us. “Though He slay me, yet will I have faith in Him. "

― Chaim Potok , The Gift of Asher Lev

18 " Asher, an animal cannot help what he does. A human being is able to control himself if he wills it. "

― Chaim Potok , The Gift of Asher Lev

19 " The customs people were angered by my drawings. I told them I didn’t make the drawings to cause trouble; I was an artist, and an artist draws what he sees and feels and thinks. But they tried to confiscate the drawings anyway and "

― Chaim Potok , The Gift of Asher Lev

20 " A man does not always remain at the same stage. He is always ascending or descending. When he reaches the top, he must concern himself with the probability that he will fall. When he reaches the bottom, he must strive once again to climb to the top. That is the nature of man. When the soul of a man is in its darkest night, he must strive constantly for new light. When one thinks there is only an end, that is when one must struggle for the new beginning. "

― Chaim Potok , The Gift of Asher Lev