Every man who has shown the world the way to beauty, to true culture, has been a rebel, a 'universal' without patriotism, without home who has found his people everywhere.

After the publication of Old Men At Midnight he was diagnosed with brain cancer. He returned to Philadelphia in 1977. [page needed] Brought up to believe that the Jewish people were central to history and God's plans he experienced a region where there were almost no Jews and no anti-Semitism yet whose religious believers prayed with the same fervor that he saw in Orthodox synagogues at home.

Potok is most famous for his first book The Chosen a 1967 novel which was listed on The New York Times’ best seller list for 39 weeks and sold more than 3400000 copies.