Isaac Bashevis Singer Quotes - Page 5

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

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

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.

What happened was no accident. Everything was preordained. True, the will was free, but heaven also made its ordinances.

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

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

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.

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

To be a vegetarian is to disagree - to disagree with the course of things today... starvation, cruelty - we must make a statement against these things. Vegetarianism is my statement. And I think it's a strong one.

What do these children do without storybooks?" Naftali asked. And Reb Zebulun replied: "They have to make do. Storybooks aren't bread. You can live without them." I couldn't live without them." Naftali said.

Children?have no use for psychology.

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

When literature becomes overly erudite, it means that interest in the art has gone and curiosity about the artist is what's important. It becomes a kind of idolatry.

Writing has power, but its power has no vector. Writers can stir the mind, but they can't direct it. Time changes things, God changes things, the dictators change things, but writers can't change anything.

Those who run around with women don't walk tightropes. They find it hard enough to crawl on the ground.

The analysis of character is the highest human entertainment.

Some of my cronies call me a pessimist and a decadent, but there is always a background of faith behind resignation.

One can find in the Yiddish tongue and in the Yiddish spirit expressions of pious joy, lust for life, longing for the Messiah, patience and deep appreciation of human individuality.

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

They still believe in God, the family, angels, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other obsolete stuff.

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")

We write not only for children but also for their parents. They, too, are serious children.

What nature creates has eternity in it.

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.

What's the good of not believing? Today it's your wife you don't believe; tomorrow it's God Himself you won't take stock in.