Isaac Bashevis Singer Quotes

We write not only for children but also for their parents. They, too, are serious children.

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.

Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge.

The analysis of character is the highest human entertainment.

I don't invent characters because the Almightly has already invented millions… Just like experts at fingerprints do not create fingerprints but learn how to read them.

I am thankful, of course, for the prize and thankful to God for each story, each idea, each word, each day.

As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behavior toward creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right.

I am a vegetarian for health reasons—the health of the chicken.

الجهل مصدر كل شر.

He had shown me letters he had received not only from Kafka but from Jakob Wassermann, Stefan Zweig, Romain Rolland, Ilya Ehrenburg, and Martin Buber.

From microbe to man, life prevailed generation to generation by sneaking past the jealous powers of destruction. Just like the Tzivkever smugglers in World War I, who stuffed their boots and blouses with tobacco, secreted all manner of contraband about their bodies, and stole across borders, breaking laws and bribing officials — so did every bit of protoplasm furtively traffic its way from epoch to epoch. It had been so when the first bacteria appeared in the slime at the ocean's edge and would be so when the sun became a cinder and the last living creature on earth froze to death, or perished in whichever way the final biological drama dictated. Animals had accepted the precariousness of existence and the necessity for flight and stealth; only man sought certainty and instead succeeded in accomplishing his own downfall.

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.

She made Herman think of a stale loaf of bread put into a hot oven to be freshened up.

إذا كان الإله حكيمًا فكيف تكون هناك حماقة؟ وإذا كان الإله هو الحياة فكيف يكون هناك موت؟ إني أرقد بالليل، رجل ضئيل، ذبابة نصف مسحوقة وأتحدث إلى الأموات وإلى الأحياء، وإلى الإله إن كان موجودًا، وإلى الشيطان الموجود يقينًا وأسألهم: ما الحاجة إلى كل هذا ؟

The latter was in praise of the virtuous wife, rarer than a pearl.