Isaac Bashevis Singer Quotes

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

There are some who call Yiddish a dead language, but so was Hebrew called for two thousand years. It has been revived in our time in a most remarkable, almost miraculous way. Aramaic was certainly a dead language for centuries but then it brought to light the Zohar, a work of mysticism of sublime value.

"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."

Irgendwo war mir ein Rest von Glauben an den freien Willen geblieben, aber an diesem Morgen war ich sicher, dem Menschen blieb so viel freie Wahl wie dem Uhrwerk in meiner Armbanduhr oder der Fliege, die auf dem Rand meiner Untertasse saß. Es waren die gleichen Kräfte, die Hitler, Stalin, den Papst, den Rabbi von Gur und ein Molekül in der Mitte der Erde antrieben, wie auch ein Sternbild, das Milliarden Lichtjahre entfernt von der Milchstraße war. Blinde Mächte? Sehende Mächte? Es war gleichgültig geworden. Es war uns bestimmt, unsere kleinen Spiele zu spielen und zermalmt zu werden.

When people come together — let's say they come to a little party or something — you always hear them discuss character. They will say this one has a bad character, this one has a good character, this one Is a fool, this one is a miser. Gossip makes the conversation. They all analyze character. It seems that the analysis of character is the highest human entertainment. And literature does it, unlike gossip, without mentioning real names.

The writers who don't discuss character but problems — social problems or any problems — take away from literature its very essence. They stop being entertaining. We, for some reason, always love to discuss and discover character. This is because each character is different, and human character is the greatest of puzzles.

Dictatorships, wars, and cruelty drive whole countries to madness. My theory is that the human species was crazy from the very first and that civilization and culture are only enhancing man’s insanity.
A Tale of Two Sisters

Dziobak, the priest, entered. He was a short, broadshouldered man; he looked as if he had been sawed in half and glued and nailed together again, His eyes were green as gooseberries, his eyebrows dense as bushes. He had a thick nose with pimples and a receding chin.

Sometimes love is stronger than a man's convictions.

I didn't expect that anyone would be interested in my kind of writing. I was interested, and this was for me enough.

What do they know-all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world - about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.

In Russia, there was one cure for every illness — vodka.

Atheism is a sort of crippled mysticism, [...] Blind nature has created all that we see, as well as all that we do not see - that's a mystical notion.

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. 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.

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. There is a quiet humor in Yiddish and a gratitude for every day of life, every crumb of success, each encounter of love. The Yiddish mentality is not haughty. It does not take victory for granted. It does not demand and command but it muddles through, sneaks by, smuggles itself amidst the powers of destruction, knowing somewhere that God's plan for Creation is still at the very beginning.

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.