Chaim Potok Quotes

We live in a cold, cold world.

You want the world to be set up for you, but sometimes it just isn't.

It's a noir world. Unfair things happen.

Harsh reality is always better than false hope.

I assure you that the world is not so amusing as we imagined.

A cynic sees little to admire in the world, while the world sees even less to admire in him.

When I hear a grown man or woman say, "Once I had faith in men, now I have not," I am inclined to ask, "Who are you whom the world has disappointed? Have not you rather disappointed the world?"

When you get to my age, and I'm 66 now, you realize that the world is a madhouse and that most people are operating in fantasy anyway. So once you realise that, it doesn't bother you much.

The conviction that the world and man is something that had better not have been, is of a kind to fill us with indulgence towards one another.

We don't trust anyone who does anything nice. That's just the sad world we live in.

My way of looking at the world is that if it is true, it is funny and it is dark. No matter how dark it is, I just think it is funny. I can't help it.

It's the world, you live in it, even if some boy has made a fool of you.

I’m not a child. Don’t talk to me like I am. (Kiara) No, you’re worse. You’re an adult who still thinks the world is a beautiful place, filled with people who will help you just for the sake of being nice. Wake up and smell the bloodbath and humility the rest of us have to cope with. (Syn)

No matter how bad you think something is, when you look into it, it's always worse.

Let's face it: Sadness and evil are always more believable than happiness and love. When a movie reviewer calls a film "realistic," everyone knows what that means--it means the movie has an unhappy ending.

I thought the whole world was like Lorain.

Pessimism negates the existing world. Yet its negating is ambiguous. It can simply will decay and nothingness, but it can also renounce what exists and thus open a path for a new formation of the world.

Alas! fond child, How are thy thoughts beguil'd To hope for honey from a nest of wasps? Thou may'st as well Go seek for ease in hell, Or sprightly nectar from the mouths of asps. The world's a hive, From whence thou canst derive No good, but what thy soul's vexation brings: But case thou meet Some petty-petty sweet, Each drop is guarded with a thousand stings.

Repeat, over and over again, in case anyone forgets it or believes the contrary, that we do not live in the best of all possible worlds.

A lot of Americans like happy endings, but life does not necessarily have a happy ending.

Hope and reality lie in inverse proportions.

Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he’s been robbed. The fact is that most putts don’t drop, most beef is tough, most children grow up to just be people, most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration, most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. Life is like an old-time rail journey—delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders, and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed. The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride.

I start out by believing the worst

I want to live happily in a world I don’t understand.

The same as real life, there is no happily ever after.