"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."

"…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."

"Something that is yours forever is never precious"

"No one knows he is fortunate until he becomes unfortunate, that's the way the world is."

"Two people who are true friends are like two bodies with one soul"

"Art is whether or not there is a scream in him wanting to get out in a special way."

"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."

"It's not a pretty world, Papa.' 'I've noticed,' my father said softly."

"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"

"I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art."

"A life is measured by how it is lived for the sake of heaven."

"If a person has a contribution to make, he must make it in public. If learning is not made public, it is a waste."

"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."

"Oh, it makes a difference, I thought. And if it doesn't make a difference you will make it make a difference."

"It is when you are angry that you must watch how you talk."

"... an artist is a person first. He is an individual. If there is no person, there is no artist."

"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."

"Art is a person's private vision expressed in aesthetic forms."

"… the world will indulge you just so long Asher Lev. Then it will stop. You will simply have to grow accustomed to that truth."

"A choice tells the world what is most important to a human being. When a man has a "choice "to make he chooses what is most important to him, and that choice tells the world what kind of a man he is."

"I won't talk to you about my family and you won't talk to me about yours. Family talk is either boring or self-pitying. Or it's Gothic, like a Faulkner novel. Who needs to talk about it? It's enough to live it."

"Honest differences of opinion should never be permitted to destroy a friendship, he told me. "Haven't you learned that yet, Reuven?"

"It is strange how ideas can float about and be ignored until they are put into a book. A book can be a weapon..."

"Millions of people can draw. Art is whether there is a scream in you wanting to get out in a special way."

"Did he really believe God wrote stories that were open to one explanation only? A story that knew but one explanation could hardly be interesting and was certainly not worth the trouble of remembering."

"When the alternative is possible disaster, a man must gamble."

"The silence became unreal and seemed suddenly filled with a noise of its own, the noise of a too long silence."

"...a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something."

"One derives great moral strength from a cup of coffee," I said."

"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 held it close to my face and smelled the ink. I have always loved the smell of ink in a new book."

"Do you know what I don't understand about that ball game? I don't understand why I wanted to kill you."

"And then I was crying too, crying with Danny, silently, for his pain and for the years of his suffering, knowing that I loved him, and not knowing whether I hated or loved the long, anguished years of his life."

"We become like dead branches and last year's leaves and what the hell good are we for ourselves and the world in a mental ghetto."

"It's always easier to learn something than to use what you've learned."

"You don't want to make mistakes with people. Sometimes when you make a mistake you lose a human soul."

"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,."

"It was no joy waking up after a dream about that man. He left a taste of thunder in my mouth."

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

"Asher Lev, an artist is a person first. He is an individual. If there is no person, there is no artist."

"Good-bye, Davita. Be discontented with the world. But be respectful at the same time."

"Williamsburg was stifling, narcotized by the heat."

"A word is worth one coin, silence is worth two"

"In Russia I went to a great yeshiva, and in America I work in a carnival."

"A person must know who he is. A person must understand himself, improve himself, learn his weaknesses in order to overcome them. It is hard for a person to understand his own weaknesses."

"They become angry and ugly and they fight anything that's a threat to them. We have to learn how to fight back without hurting them too much."

"I do not know what evil is when it comes to art. I only know what is good art and what is bad art."

"My father's right to shape my life had been taken from him by the same being who gave his own life meaning"

"If everybody who had brains and doubts left Orthodoxy, we would be in a great deal of trouble."