There was an unearthly quality to the way he sang that melody that night - as if he were winging through unknown worlds in search of sources of strength beyond himself. His eyes were open, fixed, but...
Reuven, as you grow older you will discover that the most important thing that will happen to you will often come as a result of silly things, as you call them- ordinary things is a better expression....
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 t...
May the best of the past be the worst of the future. Keep everything always off balance. No boundaries. No repetition. The opposite of what the Rebbe wants. The Rebbe seeks fixed boundaries, perfect b...
It’s not a pretty world, Papa. I’ve noticed, my father said softly.
It’s nice to be able to retire. Comforting. You think so? he said. Isn’t it? No, he said. Endings are never nice.
Is he aware of both—and unaware? Can the mind ride two such separate tracks simultaneously? Concealed ambivalence. Hidden ambiguity. Are we so flawed that we can never truly know our own most secret m...
If a person has a contribution to make, he must make it in public. If learning is not made public, it is a waste.
How can we expect to know everything about God?He looked at me, his eyes narrowing.I call that ambiguity, I said. Riddles, puzzles, double meanings, lost possibilities, the dark side to the light, the...
Asher, an animal cannot help what he does. A human being is able to control himself if he wills it.
Art happens when what is seen becomes mixed with the inside of the person who is seeing it. If
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.
...a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something.
Perhaps. But it is childish to think of what might have been.
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 manipul...
It's only a book. But what it means to write a book.
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 su...
It is only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing incessantly, I read in the collection of letters written by Camille Pissarro to his son Lucien, that one fine day you discover to your surprise...
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 t...
I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art.