… the world will indulge you just so long Asher Lev. Then it will stop. You will simply have to grow accustomed to that truth.
Chaim PotokRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the importance of understanding and respecting one's cultural roots while recognizing the limits of cultural adaptation.
In this quote, Chaim Potok reflects on the relationship individuals have with their cultural heritage. He suggests that a deep connection to one's culture involves a strong commitment to its values and principles. However, he also warns about the potential consequences of straining or altering those cultural foundations, as it may lead to a fundamental disruption of its essence. This balance between commitment and adaptability is crucial in maintaining a sincere relationship with one's culture.
Themes
CultureCommitmentHeritageIdentityValues
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about multiculturalism, one might quote Potok to emphasize the need for cultural awareness.
More from Chaim Potok
All quotes →A life is measured by how it is lived for the sake of heaven.
Chaim PotokRead
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.
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.
Chaim PotokRead
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
Similar quotes
When I was growing up, the Spanish-speaking world was Balkanized. We were isolated. We didn't know what was happening in cultural terms in Ecuador, Colombia and Chile. Nowadays, this has changed a lot - fortunately for writers and readers. There is much more integration.
Mario Vargas LlosaRead
Enshrined in a language is the whole of a community's history and a large part of its cultural identity. The world is a mosaic of visions. To lose even one piece of this mosaic is a loss for all of us.
David CrystalRead
We know so much about the European food story, and we're getting to know about the American food story; but we know so little about the African food story.
Marcus SamuelssonRead
A bicultural upbringing is a rich but imperfect thing
Jhumpa LahiriRead
The reason I loved working at Boeing was because I loved the idea of air travel as a way of bringing people and cultures together - because when we come together as people and cultures, we realize that we are not that different after all, and when we realize that we are not that different after all, the world becomes a better place.
Alan MulallyRead
[Culture] denotes an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms, by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life.
Clifford GeertzRead