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.
No one knows he is fortunate until he becomes unfortunate, that's the way the world is.
I’ve never known of a serious artist who was happy. Except maybe Rubens.
In Culture Confrontation in Urban America, Potok uses the term Zwischenmensch to define himself and his experience of cultural conflict: Urban wanderings that result in core-culture confrontations oft...
If everybody who had brains and doubts left Orthodoxy, we would be in a great deal of trouble.
I looked at my right hand, the hand with which I painted. There was power in that hand. Power to create and destroy. Power to bring pleasure and pain. Power to amuse and horrify. There was in that han...
I do not know what evil is when it comes to art. I only know what is good art and what is bad art.
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...
Asher Lev, an artist is a person first. He is an individual. If there is no person, there is no artist.
Art is whether or not there is a scream in him wanting to get out in a special way.
And now you’ll be able to sail right through to the end. I’ve already written the end. It was the beginning I couldn’t write. The story you just told me is part of your beginning? It is the myself tha...
A ram comes always as an astonishment. Do you know what a ram is, Benjamin? R-A-M. A random act of menschlichkeit.
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
Obstacles are given us in order to make our desire even stronger. The more a thing is hidden from man, the more he desires it, and the greater the chance he will one day discover it.
If there were not anxiety behind those apples, Cézanne would not interest me any more than Bouguereau.
I wish that your journey will be to a light not only for yourself but for all of us. I wish that it will be a journey for the sake of heaven. I give you my blessing, Asher Lev.
I do not sculpt and paint to make the world sacred. I sculpt and paint to give permanence to my feelings about how terrible the world truly is. Nothing is real to me except my own feelings; nothing is...
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.
Can you understand what it means for something to be incomplete? my mother had once asked me. I understood, I understood.
Art is a person's private vision expressed in aesthetic forms.