Isaac Bashevis Singer Quotes

A story to me means a plot where there is some surprise. Because that is how life is - full of surprises.

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

Of all the blessings bestowed on man, the greatest lies in the fact that God's face is forever hidden from him

Kindness, Ive discovered, is everything in life

What nature delivers to us is never stale. Because what nature creates has eternity in it.

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.

One prays for life , life means free choice and freedom is mystery . If one knew the truth how could there be freedom

The ugly truth is that a great number of men — young men in particular — have a passion to kill. They only need a pretext of a cause. One time, it's for religion; another, it may be for Fascism or to defend democracy. Their urge to kill is so great it surpasses their fear of being killed. This is a truth forbidden to utter, but true nonetheless. Those Nazis ready to kill and die for Hitler would under other circumstances be as ready to do the same for Stalin. There hasn't been a foolish ambition or an insanity for which people weren't ready to die.

"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.

The characters have their own lives and their own logic, and you have to act accordingly.

"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")"

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

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

At moments when Herman fantasized about a new metaphysics, or even a new religion, he based everything on the attraction of the sexes. In the beginning was lust. The godly, as well as the human, principle is desire. Gravity, light, magnetism, thought may be aspects of the same universal longing. Suffering, emptiness, darkness are nothing more than interruptions of a cosmic orgasm that grows forever in intensity...

The past is not lost. An image from years ago remained present somewhere in the fourth dimension and it reached you just in that moment.