Tonight was our ward book club discussion of The Chosen by Chaim Potok, and I came away from it feeling energized, in love with reading, and so thankful that books are one of my passions in life. Not too shabby eh?
Hannah and her beautiful baby girl Kaylee came with me tonight, so that was fun. We had a very small group, only 3 other women, which is about half as many as we normally have (must be summer vacations or something) and they definitely missed out. The woman leading our discussion always amazes me (she comes every month) with how incredibly articulate and well read she is. She took this book to a whole other level for me and left me wanting to read more and think harder. Nice! By the way, she has 6 kids (3 of which are under 3) and a busy life, but still manages to be well read and interesting, she's inspiring to me.
Here are the quotes I loved from this book, I highly recommend it.
"How can you say something like that if you are not sure?
That is a terrible thing to say."
He was controlling his anger with difficulty.
"It seemed to be deliberate."
"Things are always what they seem to be, Reuven? Since when?"
page 51
"I lay on the pillow and closed my right eye. I found myself crying after a while, and I thought that might be bad for my eyes. I had always taken them for granted, the way I took for granted all the rest of my body and also my mind. My father had told me many times that health was a gift, but I never really paid much attention to the fact that I was rarely sick or almost never had to go to a doctor. I tried to imagine what my life might be like if I had only one good eye, but I couldn't. I had just never thought of my eyes before. I had never thought what it might be like to be blind. I felt the wild terror again, and I tried to control it. I lay there a long time, thinking about my eyes." page53
"My father doesn't write," Danny said, "He reads a lot, but he never writes. He says that words distort what a person really feels in his heart. He doesn't like to talk to much, either. Oh, he talks plenty when we're studying Talmud together. But otherwise he doesn't say much. He told me once he wishes everyone could talk in silence." page 72
"I wish I was outside now," I said.
"I envy them being able to walk around like that.
They don't know how lucky they are."
"No one knows he is fortunate until he becomes unfortunate," my father said quietly. " That is the way the world is." page 73
"You know what a friend is, Reuven? A Greek philosopher said that two people who are true friends are like two bodies with one soul."
"Listen to me. I am not talking only about liking him. I am telling you to make him your friend and to let him make you his friend." page 74
"Reuven, as you grow older you will discover that the most important things that will happen to you will often come as a result of silly things, as you call them -- 'ordinary things' is a better expression. That is the way the world is." page 107
"You think a friend is an easy thing to be? If you are truly his friend, you will discover otherwise." page 136
"Great men are always difficult to understand." page 141
"Six million of our people have been slaughtered," he went on quietly. "It is inconceivable. It will have meaning only if we give it meaning." page 182
"Do you know what it's like to be trapped? How could you possibly know? It's the most hellish, choking, constricting feeling in the world. I scream with every bone in my body to get out of it. My mind cries to get out of it. But I can't. Not now. One day I will though, I'll want you around on that day, friend. I'll need you around on that day." page 191
"Human beings do not live forever, Reuven. We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. So it may be asked what value is there to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye? I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks,
that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span,
he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life. It is hard work to fill one's life with meaning.
That I do not think you understand yet. A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest when I am no longer here." page 204
"Honest differences of opinion should never be permitted to destroy a friendship, haven't you learned that yet?" page 206
"You can listen to silence, Reuven. I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own. It talks to me sometimes. I feel myself alive in it. It talks. And I can hear it. You have to want to listen to it, and then you can hear it. It has a strange, beautiful texture. It doesn't always talk. Sometimes--sometimes it cries, and you can hear the pain of the world in it. It hurts to listen to it then. But you have to." page 249
"It is not so easy to be a friend, is it, Reuven?" page 252
"Reuven, when someone asks to speak to you, you must let him speak to you. You still have not learned that?" page 258
"A man is born into this world with only a tiny spark of goodness in him. The spark is God, it is the soul; the rest is ugliness and evil, a shell. The spark must be guarded like a treasure, it must be nurtured, it must be fanned into flame. It must learn to seek out other sparks, it must dominate the shell. Anything can be a shell, Reuven. Anything. Indifference, laziness, brutality, and genius. Yes, even a great mind can be a shell and choke the spark." page 263
"One learns of the pain of others by suffering one's own pain, he would say, by turning inside oneself, by finding one's own soul. And it is important to know of pain, he said. It destroys our self-pride, our arrogance, our indifference toward others. It makes us aware of how frail and tiny we are and of how much we must depend upon the Master of the Universe." page 265
**Any stand-out quotes for you?
Will you read this book?**
