Isaac Bashevis Singer Quotes

There is no such thing as love. Give me a cigarette. In the camp, people climbed on one another like worms.

We must believe in free will. We have no choice.

Along with the atom, the personality of the Homo Sapiens has been splitting...

"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")"

Wie ich höre, zeigt auch der Himmel eine Leidenschaft für das Neue. Ein Stern wird müde, ein Stern zu sein, und er explodiert und wird eine Nova.

In their behaviour towards creatures, all men [are] Nazis

People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times.

"When the ship approached the equator, I stopped going out on deck in the daytime. The sun burned like a flame. The days had shortened and night came swiftly. One moment it was light, the next it was dark. The sun did not set but fell into the water like a meteor. Late in the evening, when I went out briefly, a hot wind slapped my face. From the ocean came a roar of passions that seemed to have broken through all barriers:'We mus procreate and multiply! We must exhaust all the powers of lust!' The waves glowed like lava, and I imagined I could see multitudes of living beings - algae, whales, sea monsters - reveling in an orgy, from the surface to the bottom of the sea. Immortality was the law here. The whole planet raged with animation. At times, I heard my name in the clamor: the spirit of the abyss calling me to join them in their nocturnal dance. ("Hanka")"

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.

Wir laufen davon, und der Berg Sinai läuft hinter uns her. Diese Jagd hat uns krank gemacht.

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.

One thing I found out then was that pity is a form of love and, actually, its highest expression.
A Tale of Two Sisters

Shoulders are from God, and burdens too.

"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")"

Misfortune draws people to religion and mysticism