Best 136 quotes of Isaac Bashevis Singer on MyQuotes

Isaac Bashevis Singer

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    Actually, the true story of a person's life can never be written. It is beyond the power of literature. The full tale of any life would be both utterly boring and utterly unbelievable.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    All is foreseen but the choice is given.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    All that God does is for the good.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    A Marxist has never written a good novel.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, no harmony between people. Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    As much as I can give of myself I give of myself. There's no reason why not. And when I have to hide something, I let the character speak.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behavior toward creatures, all men were Nazis.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behavior toward creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    A story to me means a plot where there is some surprise... Because this is how life is full of surprises.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    A story to me must have some surprise...I must have a passion to write the story.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    But my gloom did not lessen. I knew that I'd had a bad dream, and I stood in the dark trying to recollect it. The second I closed my eyes, I was with the dead. They did things words cannot express. They spoke madness. ("Hanka")

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    Children?have no use for psychology.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    Children have no use for psychology. They detest sociology. They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff. When a book is boring, they yawn openly. They don't expect their writer to redeem humanity, but leave to adults such childish allusions.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    Children read books, not reviews. They don't give a hoot about critics.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    Even in the worm that crawls in the earth there glows a divine spark. When you slaughter a creature, you slaughter God.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    Every body resisted (the slaughterer) in its own fashion, tried to escape and seemed to argue with the Creator to its last breath.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    For those who are willing to make an effort, great miracles and wonderful treasures are in store.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    From borrowing one gets poorer and from work one gets richer.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    God gave us so many emotions, and so many strong ones. Every human being, even if he is an idiot, is a millionaire in emotions.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    God is a writer and we are both the heroes and the readers.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    Heaven and earth conspire that everything which has been, be rooted and reduced to dust. Only the dreamers, who dream while awake, call back the shadows of the past and braid nets from the unspun thread.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    How can we speak of right and justice if we take an innocent creature and shed its blood? How can we pray to God for mercy if we ourselves have no mercy? Nobel laureate in literature.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    I am not ashamed to admit that I belong to those who fantasize that literature is capable of bringing new horizons and new perspectives--philosophical, religious, aesthetical and even social.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    I am thankful, of course, for the prize and thankful to God for each story, each idea, each word, each day.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    I believe in free will. I have no choice.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    I believe in God but people are liars. It's those people who say they are appointed by God who I don't believe in.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    I don't invent characters because the Almightly has already invented millions... Just like experts at fingerprints do not create fingerprints but learn how to read them.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    If Moses had been paid newspaper rates for the Ten Commandments, he might have written the Two Thousand Commandments.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    If there would come a voice from God saying, 'I'm against vegetarianism!' I would say, 'Well, I am for it!' This is how strongly I feel in this regard.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    If you keep on saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet... [at least for your own situation. Blind optimism is just as foolish. The solution is a rigorously balanced, rational outlook.]

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    If you keep saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    I get up every morning with a desire to do some creative work. This desire is made of the same stuff as the sexual desire, the desire to make money, or any other desire.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    I have heard from my father and mother all the answers that faith in God could offer to those who doubt and search for the truth. In our home and in many other homes the eternal questions were more actual than the latest news in the Yiddish newspaper. In spite of all the disenchantments and all my skepticism I believe that the nations can learn much from those Jews, their way of thinking, their way of bringing up children, their finding happiness where others see nothing but misery and humiliation.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    I know as a writer how valuable a tool is the wastebasket. Perhaps God throws away many experiments before He finds the right expression. Perhaps we are the discards - or we could be the part He keeps. This mystery is what keeps us all going, to see what happens in the next chapter.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    In relation to them (animals), all people are Nazis for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    In God's mill even chaff becomes flour.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    In many ways, astrology, numerology and palmistry are corruptions of the occult because they have attempted to make a practice out of something that is essentially imaginative.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    In our time, when the literature for adults is deteriorating, good books for children are the only hope, the only refuge.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    In the half darkness I winked to my other self, my mad dictator, and congratulated him on his droll victory. I closed my eyes and felt the warmth flowing from Shosha's head to my face. What did I have to lose? Nothing more than what everyone loses anyway.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    In the history of old Jewish literature there was never any basic difference between the poet and the prophet. Our ancient poetry often became law and a way of life.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    In their behavior toward creatures, all men are Nazis. Human beings see oppression vividly when they're the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    It is a fact that the classics of Yiddish literature are also the classics of the modern Hebrew literature.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    It is a general rule that when the grain of truth cannot be found, men will swallow great helpings of falsehood.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    It is written, better to be a fool all your days than for one hour to be evil. You are not a fool. They are the fools. For he who causes his neighbor to feel shame loses Paradise himself.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    It seems that the analysis of character is the highest human entertainment. And literature does it, unlike gossip, without mentioning names.

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    Isaac Bashevis Singer

    I was brought up to believe in free will. Although I came to doubt all revelation, I can never accept the idea that the Universe is a physical or chemical accident, a result of blind evolution. Even though I learned to recognize the lies, the clichés and the idolatries of the human mind, I still cling to some truths which I think all of us might accept some day.