Isaac Bashevis Singer Quotes

If one knew the truth how could there be freedom? If hell and paradise were in the middle of the marketplace, everyone would be a saint.

"What do these children do without story books?" 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.

إن الروح كالجسد يمكن أن تتلقى ضربات عديدة، ثم تتوقف عن الإحساس بالألم.

We expected a large gathering, because it is the nature of people to forget a saint while he is alive and give him all honors at his death.

Wann immer ich vom Leben den Status quo erwarte, taucht etwas ganz unerwartetes auf. Die Weltgeschichte ist aus dem gleichen Teig gemacht wie Semmeln. Hauptsache, sie sind frisch.

"What concrete steps can I take now?" I asked the voice, and it replied: "Go to a house of prayer and pray."
"Without faith?" I countered, and the voice said: "You have more faith than you know."

His eyes reflected a softness I had already forgotten in America.

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.

The Rabbi thought he saw an expression of perplexity in the golem's eyes. It seemed to the Rabbi that his eyes were asking, 'Who am I? Why am I here? What is the secret of my being? Rabbi Leib often saw the same bewilderment in the eyes of newborn children and even in the eyes of animals.

We have to believe in free-will. We've got no choice.

Children don t read to find their identity to free themselves from guilt to quench the thirst for rebellion or to get rid of alienation. They have no use for psychology.... 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 illusions.

"..There are circumstances when you are torn away like a leaf from a tree and no power can attach you again.
The wind carries you from your roots. There's a name for it in Hebrew, but I've forgotten."

"Na-v'nad - a fugitive and a wanderer.”

“That's it."

If men had their way, every woman would lie down a prostitute and get up a virgin.

"Yes, I lay in my grave. But if you lie in a grave long enough, you get accustomed to it and you don't want to part from it. He had given me a pill of cyanide, He and his wife and their son also carried such pills. We all lived with death, and I want you to know that one can fall in love with death. Whoever has loved death cannot love anything else any more. When the liberation came and they told me to leave, I didn't want to go. I clung to the threshold like an ox being dragged to the slaughter. ("Hanka")"

When you betray somebody else, you also betray yourself