17 quotes
Creativity is a life-affirming activity. Lack of response to creativity and being condemned to write for the desk drawer is a stifling, destructive experience.
A Yiddish Writer Reflects on Translation (2005)
There are times in life when muteness is the only appropriate language.
Letters to Blume Lempel (1982)
Writing is a lonely profession, and after the Holocaust, Yiddish writers were doubly lonely.
"Oh, when will there ever be peace between the old-timers and the newcomers?" one of the listeners sighs.
The crowd was in good spirits, convivial and singing, and for a while the troubles of the world seemed far away.
Letters to Blume Lempel (1982)
The girl possesses a carefree lightheartedness that makes Barukh feel more acutely the weight of the despair that he carries within himself.
I am not a card-carrying feminist, but the intellectual baggage that I bring to the act of writing is certainly coloured by my femininity.
Feminism and Yiddish Literature: A Personal Approach (1992)
I will say no more about the horrors of the concentration camps. They are indescribable and untranslatable.
I respect all definitions of art, but I cherish most the definition which states that art is an expression of the desire to communicate on the most meaningful level.
Exile At Last: Selected Poems (2013)
Poems were created in the ghettos, and even at the threshold of the crematoria. As long as there is life, the human heart will never cease singing of its joys and sorrows.
Confessions of a Yiddish Writer (1973)
If love is a mental disease, this behaviour of mine is one of its symptoms. (p76, Michal letter to Mira)
I was entranced by the kind of magic that went into the act of transposing words from one language into another.
Even when I’m not writing—and now is not a very productive time for me—I live with my writing and feel it is my anchor, my support.
Letters to Blume Lempel (1982)
It was April. Nature followed its course and gradually began to cover the ugliness, the remnants of violence, with a veil of green and flowers.
Confessions of a Yiddish Writer (1973)
one’s style, one’s method of writing—these, I believe, truly reveal the face of one’s soul.
Letters to Blume Lempel (1982)
basically, language is an inadequate and limited instrument. No matter what language a writer speaks, she always hopes that it will be universal, that it will transcend the particular ethnic barriers that language creates.
Exile At Last: Selected Poems (2013)
how can one speak of settling when your foundation has been ripped from under you? Nevertheless, one goes on.
Letters to Blume Lempel (1982)