…a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something.
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?
Two people who are true friends are like two bodies with one soul
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.
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.
It’s always easier to learn something than to use what you’ve learned. . . . You’re alone when you’re learning. But you always use it on other people. It’s different when there are other people involved.
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.
…everything has a past. Everything – a person, an object, a word, everything. If you don’t know the past, you can’t understand the present and plan properly for the future.
I sat near a window in our little synagogue and looked out at the large church and wondered how a statue whose face was so full of love could be worshipped by someone whose heart was so full of hate.
I’ve begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own.
The silence became unreal and seemed suddenly filled with a noise of its own, the noise of a too long silence.
It is strange how ideas can float about and be ignored until they are put into a book. A book can be a weapon…
In Russia I went to a great yeshiva, and in America I work in a carnival.
Perhaps. But it is childish to think of what might have been.
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.
Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way!Thou art the Potter and I am the clay.
> 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.
As a species we are always hungry for new knowledge.
But today we become aware of other readings of the human experience very quickly because of the media and the speed with which people travel the planet.
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.