I think the hardest part of writing is revising. And by that I mean the following: A novelist has to create the piece of marble and then chip away to find the figure in it.


Chaim Potok

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My dad can be pretty critical sometimes.
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I love the sport and being competitive.
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I hate having my picture taken.
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More Chaim Potok

Come, let us have some tea and continue to talk about happy things.
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Every man who has shown the world the way to beauty, to true culture, has been a rebel, a 'universal...
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Two people who are true friends are like two bodies with one soul
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I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimen...
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For all the pain you suffered, my mama. For all the torment of your past and future years, my mama. ...
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…everything has a past. Everything – a person, an object, a word, everything. If you don’t kno...
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Something that is yours forever is never precious
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It's not a pretty world, Papa.'
'I've noticed,' my father said softly.
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A book is sent out into the world, and there is no way of fully anticipating the responses it will e...
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It is impossible to fuse totally with a culture for which you feel a measure of antagonism.
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Well, in The Chosen, Danny Saunders, from the heart of his religious reading of the world, encounter...
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There is in my work a very strong religious foreground and background. In the later work some of tha...
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A non-fiction writer pretty much has the shape of the figure in front of him or her and goes about r...
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It is when you are angry that you must watch how you talk.
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Life is like the blink of an eye. What is that worth? Nothing. But the eye that blinks - that is som...
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As a species we are always hungry for new knowledge.
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A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life. It is hard work t...
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I'm constantly revising. Once the book is written and typed, I go through the entire draft again...
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Oh, it makes a difference, I thought. And if it doesn't make a difference you will make it make a di...
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I think most serious writers, certainly in the modern period, use their own lives or the lives of pe...
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I will go wherever the truth leads me. It is secular scholarship, Rebbe; it is not the scholarship o...
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It was a large store and i did not like to go in it because its brightness was cold, like sunlight o...
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Every day learns from the one that went before, but no day teaches the one that follows. Well,
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I went away and cried to the Master of the Universe, "What have you done to me? A mind like this I n...
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We become like dead branches and last year's leaves and what the hell good are we for ourselves and ...
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In our time... a man whose enemies are faceless bureaucrats almost never wins. It is our equivalent ...
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You can listen to silence, Reuven. I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn fr...
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Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way!
Thou art the Potter and I am the clay.
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It is inconceivable to me that a million or three million or half a million human beings will think ...
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Yes, there is some thought about making a film of My Name Is Asher Lev.
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Well, one hopes that if you're really related to the core of your particular culture, you have p...
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And yet there are some magnificent things from Freud, profound insights into the nature of man.
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And these two elements are at odds with one another because Freud is utterly adversary to almost all...
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But today we become aware of other readings of the human experience very quickly because of the medi...
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Two hundred or more years ago most people on the planet were never aware of any reality other than t...
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To the extent that I come from a deeply religious tradition and have been contending with those begi...
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If I had a plot that was all set in advance, why would I want go through the agony of writing the no...
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Every man who has shown the world the way to beauty, to true culture, has been a rebel, a 'unive...
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I get up around 6:30. I work from about 8:00 to 1:00, take a break for lunch, work again until about...
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I'm not altogether certain that a fundamentalism of necessity has to argue that it is the only r...
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In other words, Judaism is not Calvinism.
CHAIM POTOK
Four Corners Patriot Militia.
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I mean from Germans to Irish Catholics to Jews to Hispanics virtually the same kinds of things have ...
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The notion of radical Islamists from abroad actually getting together with American neo-Nazis I thin...
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I think there is irony in the fact that the computer is both their chief venue of communication and ...
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meeting with extremist anti-government groups and inoculating them against anthrax.
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[Most agree that the prosecution of killers whose identity was an open secret has had a salutary eff...
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Is Bill White the next David Duke? Out of the question. He will never rise to that level,
MARK POTOK
Miracles sometimes occur, but one has to work terribly hard for them.
CHAIM. WEIZMANN
I head a nation of a million presidents.
CHAIM. WEIZMANN
A law is something which must have a moral basis, so that there is an inner compelling force for eve...
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I do not bring forgiveness with me, nor forgetfulness. The only ones who can forgive are dead; the l...
CHAIM HERZOG
Einstein explained his theory to me every day, and on my arrival I was fully convinced that he under...
CHAIM WEIZMANN
It's a great pro-Israel tool to have MIT students meet Israelis on campus.
CHAIM KUTNICKI
Miracles sometimes occur, but one has to work terribly hard for them.
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One can indeed try to obtain a particular result either by the use of violence or by speech aimed at...
CHAIM PERELMAN
I head a nation of a million presidents.
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It was agreed that first of all we will discuss on the agenda security, and then we will discuss nor...
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It will be impossible to continue the peace process if terrorist acts will happen.
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It's very difficult to get large institutions to sign on to such a plan, but we've had very positive...
CHAIM KUTNICKI
We are working on several different levels.
CHAIM KUTNICKI
There are a number of people who are actually pretty good friends now.
CHAIM KUTNICKI
Song is the pen of the soul.
CHAIM DRIZIN