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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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"That men, who might have tower'd in the vanOf all the congregated world, to fanAnd winnow from the coming step of timeAll chaff of custom, wipe away all slimeLeft by men-slugs and human serpentry,Have been content to let occasion die,Whilst they did sleep in love's Elysium."

"My love is a winter's mistgently dissolvingthrough the windowat the nape of your neck."

"Poems can getsleepless tooand becomethe loneliest thingin the universe."

"Whatever you get out of poetry - take it. take it. take it. Words are better off felt than understood."

"I do think that poetry is important though, if you don't strive at it, if you don't fill it full of stars and falseness."

"But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy waysI cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet..Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves."

"May this poetrybe the homeyou will someday come back to."

"The American bards shall be marked for generosity and affection and for encouraging competitors. The great poets are also to be known by the absence in them of tricks and by the justification of perfect personal candor. How beautiful is candor! All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor."

"Poetry keeps mein a highly drunken stateof divinity."
Explore more quotes by Chaim Potok

"If I had a plot that was all set in advance, why would I want go through the agony of writing the novel? A novel is a kind of exploration and discovery, for me at any rate."

"But today we become aware of other readings of the human experience very quickly because of the media and the speed with which people travel the planet."

"And these two elements are at odds with one another because Freud is utterly adversary to almost all the ways of structuring the human experience found in Western religions. No Western religion can countenance Freud's view of man."

"What I have in advance are people I want to write about and a problem or problems that I see those people encountering and that I want to explore - it all proceeds sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, and scene by scene."

"And yet there are some magnificent things from Freud, profound insights into the nature of man."

"A non-fiction writer pretty much has the shape of the figure in front of him or her and goes about refining it. A work of non-fiction is not as difficult to write as a work of fiction, but it's not as satisfying in the end."

"To the extent that I come from a deeply religious tradition and have been contending with those beginnings all of my life - that constitutes the subject of much of my early fiction."
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