"The painting did not say fully what I had wanted to say; it did not reflect fully the anguish and torment I had wanted to put into it. Within myself, a warning voice spoke soundlessly of fraud. I had brought something incomplete into the world. Now I felt its incompleteness. . . . Only I would have known. But 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 surge of effort that is always the difference between integrity and deceit in a created work. I would not be the whore to my own existence. Can you understand that?" - Chaim Potok,
My Name is Asher Lev (New York: Fawcett, 1972), 328.
1 comment:
Heather and I went camping one week (before children) and spent the whole time reading Chaim Potok around the fire. We still talk about that week really warmly.--brian
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