Well, one hopes that if you're really related to the core of your particular culture, you have profound commitments to it, and that you are aware of how much you can strain it before you do violence to its essential nature.
Chaim PotokRead
All of us grow up in particular realities - a home, family, a clan, a small town, a neighborhood. Depending upon how we're brought up, we are either deeply aware of the particular reading of reality into which we are born, or we are peripherally aware of it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Our upbringing shapes our perception of reality.
This quote by Chaim Potok emphasizes the profound impact that our backgrounds have on how we interpret the world around us. It suggests that the environment we are raised in, including family and community, influences our understanding and awareness of our individual realities, either deeply or superficially depending on our level of consciousness about these influences.
Themes
UpbringingRealityPerceptionEnvironmentAwareness
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on sociology, this quote could illustrate how social structures influence individual perspectives.
More from Chaim Potok
All quotes →… the world will indulge you just so long Asher Lev. Then it will stop. You will simply have to grow accustomed to that truth.
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A life is measured by how it is lived for the sake of heaven.
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A book is sent out into the world, and there is no way of fully anticipating the responses it will elicit. Consider the responses called forth by the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare - let alone contemporary poetry or a modern novel.
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He taught them that the purpose of a man is to make his life holy--every aspect of his life: eating, drinking praying, sleeping. God is everywhere, he told them, and if it seems at times that He is hidden from us, it is only because we have not yet learned to seek Him correctly.
Chaim PotokRead
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 PotokRead
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