How we cite our quotes: (Page.Paragraph)
Quote #1
I looked at my hand. I saw the old Waterman fountain pen my father had once given me. On the way out of my room earlier that morning, I had put the pen into one of pockets. Now I held it in my hand. I had drawn a face with it across an entire printed page of my Chumash. I had drawn the face in thick black ink. It was a bearded face, dark-eyed, dark-haired, vaguely menacing. On top of the face, I had drawn a head of dark hair covered by an ordinary hat. (123.3)
When Asher draws a gruesome caricature of the Rabbi in his Chumash, he's pretty much doing the worst possible thing you could possibly do in a yeshiva: defiling a sacred book while making fun of a spiritual leader. What a rebel. This act of rebellion, unconscious though it may seem, is a way for Asher to assert himself as an individual. He is doing something nobody else would do, and he's doing it with his art.
Quote #2
What is so terrible about Vienna? I felt myself trembling. I love this street. Yes. I don't want to go into exile. But I'll draw another street. Streets are all the same. Oh, they're not. They're not the same. I don't know enough about this street to really draw it yet; how can I draw a strange street in a foreign land full of people who hate me? Why should I even want to draw such a street? (126.2)
Asher's struggle against his parents' desire to move to Vienna is the first real instance of him asserting his individualism in the book. By refusing to comply with the status quo, our young hero demonstrates that he's no average and obedient son. Ruh-roh. Bonus: staying home from Vienna is basically what makes his growth as an artist possible.
Quote #3
I was going into a huge gray stone building and I remembered none of the drawings had been of my father. Not a single drawing in that sketchbook was of my father. There were huge glass doors bordered in bronze and a marble interior and someone at a counter talking to me, looking at me curiously and pointing up a marble staircase. I climbed the stairs. (138.2-139.1)
After the mashpia asks Asher to fill a notebook of sketches, Asher wanders out of the yeshiva to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he gives himself a little education in art history. Asher is asserting himself as an individual here because he's rejecting the mashpia's—and his father's—authority while pursuing his own interests.
Quote #4
'Your father journeys through Europe bringing Jews back to Torah, and here his own son refuses to study Torah. Asher, you are a scandal.' I told him I wanted one tube of cobalt blue and one large tube of titanium white. My mother was giving me money now for the things I needed. (165.10-11)
Asher has this conversation with Yudel Krinsky in Yudel's stationery store. During this time, Asher is struggling to pay attention in school and spending all his time doodling in his Hebrew notebooks, but he's not ashamed of it. As this quote demonstrates, Asher is full of confidence and self-assurance when Yudel attacks him. If that doesn't spell individuality, then nothing does.
Quote #5
On the way to the Picasso, I stopped at one of the paintings of Jesus. I did not copy the painting; I merely looked at it. My eyes moved across it. The wounds intrigued me. How had he made the wounds so real? Had there really been wounds like that? I wondered what it felt like having wounds like that. (180.10)
Here we see Asher in his natural habitat—the art museum—looking at images of Jesus on the cross, which is something that Hasidic Jews are typically pretty uncomfortable with looking at. If anything, this act is an excellent example of Asher striking out on his own: as an individual, an artist, and a rebel.
Quote #6
'Asher Lev, are you really thirteen years old?'
'Yes.'
'Why not?' she murmured. 'Why not? Goya was twelve. Picasso was nine. It could happen in Brooklyn to a boy with payos.'
(211.12-212.1)
Asher has this conversation with Anna Schaeffer once she sees his artwork, and you better believe that she thinks it's amazing. We also learn from this that Asher is commonly regarded as a special person—a genius on par with great artists like Picasso and Goya. This is another way that Asher is distinguished from his community: as a capital-I Individual with real artistic promise.
Quote #7
The next day, I slipped the drawing into his Gemorra. I saw the sudden stiffening of his shoulders when he found it. I saw him stare at it. I saw him turn to look at me, then stop. He crumpled the drawing. But he did not throw it away. He put it in his pocket.(241.2)
Asher has created a truly terrifying caricature of a classmate who was teasing him and given it to him in pretty much the most artistic and amazing form of revenge ever. Would anyone else be able to retaliate to bullying with a Michelangelo-quality sketch? Nope. Does this make Asher an individual? Definitely.
Quote #8
One afternoon, I painted a portrait of myself in my fisherman's cap, with my long red earlocks and tufts of red hair on my cheeks and chin and eyes dark but flecked with tiny spots of light. I looked at the portrait and I tucked my earlocks behind my ears. (255.3)
The earlocks—or payot, as they are referred to in Hebrew—are commonly worn by Hasidic Jews as a sign of religious devotion. By tucking his earlocks behind his ears, Asher is separating himself from his community and asserting himself as an individual.
Quote #9
'I am going to be an artist,' I said. 'I am going to be a great artist.'(265.6)
This statement is pretty much the essence of the book: Asher is going to be a great artist at any and all costs. There's some self-actualization and individuality right there for you.
Quote #10
A few days later, I thought I would destroy the paintings. I had done them; that was enough. They did not have to remain alive. But I could not destroy them. (330.3)
Asher paints Brooklyn Crucifixion I and II, knowing full well that the paintings won't exactly win him any friends in the Hasidic community. And yet he knows what he's painted is real and true, and to destroy these paintings would be to give in to career-destroying pressure. So Asher asserts his individuality and keeps right on painting. He's a real maverick if we've ever seen one. Sorry, Sarah Palin.