Isaac Bashevis Singer Quotes

We all play chess with Fate as partner. He makes a move, we make a move. He tries to checkmate us in three moves, we try to prevent it. We know we can't win, but we're driven to give him a good fight.

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

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.

Es imposible escribir la verdadera historia de la vida de una persona. Supera el poder de la literatura. El relato completo de cualquier vida sería absolutamente aburrido además de absolutamente increíble.

A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.

"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."

What a strange power there is in clothing.

Those who understand the complexities of human nature know that joy and pain, ugliness and beauty, love and hate, mercy and cruelty and other conflicting emotions often blend and cannot be separated from each other.

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.

Vegetarianism is my religion. I became a consistent vegetarian some twenty-three years ago. Before that, I would try over and over again. But it was sporadic. Finally, in the mid-1960s, I made up my mind. And I've been a vegetarian ever since. When a human kills an animal for food, he is neglecting his own hunger for justice. Man prays for mercy, but is unwilling to extend it to others. Why should man then expect mercy from God? It's unfair to expect something that you are not willing to give. … This is my protest against the conduct of the world. To be a vegetarian is to disagree — to disagree with the course of things today. Nuclear power, starvation, cruelty — we must make a statement against these things. Vegetarianism is my statement. And I think it's a strong one.

It is a general rule that when the grain of truth cannot be found, men will swallow great helpings of falsehood.

A rock was sticking out of the water, jagged and pointed, covered with moss — a remnant of the Ice Age. It had withstood the rains, the snows, the frost, the heat. It was afraid of no one. It did not need redemption, it had already been redeemed.

If you keep on saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet.

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

literature can very well describe the absurd, but it should never become absurd itself