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Isaac Bashevis Singer Quotes
1902–1991 Poland
Isaac Bashevis Singer (Yiddish: יצחק באַשעװיס זינגער or יצחק בת־שבֿעס זינגער; pseudonym: Icek Hersz Zynger; born 21 November 1902 as Icek Zynger, died 24 July 1991) was a Polish-American writer of short stories and novels in Yiddish; he used his mother's name in devising his penname "Bashevis" (son of Bathsheba). He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978.
Poland Activists Autobiographers Memoirists Nobel laureates Also known as: Isaac Singer, Singer, Isaac Bashevis
Random Isaac Bashevis Singer quote
23 quotes
A story to me means a plot where there is some surprise… Because that is how life is — full of surprises.
Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge.
Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.
I am a vegetarian for health reasons—the health of the chicken.
I am thankful, of course, for the prize and thankful to God for each story, each idea, each word, each day.
The analysis of character is the highest human entertainment.
There is no death. How can there be death if everything is part of the Godhead? The soul never dies and the body is never really alive.
Even in love, people betray themselves. And when you betray somebody else, you also betray yourself. I would say a great part of human history is a history of self-betrayal and betrayal of others.
Night is a time of rigor, but also of mercy. There are truths which one can see only when it’s dark.
Teibele and Her Demon (1984)
When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I am grown up, they call me a writer.
We write not only for children but also for their parents. They, too, are serious children.
Stories for Children (1984)
The Jewish people have been in exile for 2,000 years; they have lived in hundreds of countries, spoken hundreds of languages and still they kept their old language, Hebrew. They kept their Aramaic, later their Yiddish; they kept their books; they kept their faith.
We must believe in free will — we have no choice.
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.
Not only has our generation lost faith in Providence but also in man himself, in his institutions and often in those who are nearest to him.
Nobel lecture (1978)
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.
If Moses had been paid newspaper rates for the Ten Commandments, he might have written the Two Thousand Commandments.
Take three quarts of duck's milk...
Life is God's novel. Let him write it.
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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