"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 o… - Isaac Bashevis Singer

But what about the creatures whose flesh he's carrying there? A few days ago they were alive. They too have souls. They too are God’s children. They were quite possibly made of better material than human beings. Since they were sinless, they were certainly more innocent. But day after day they are ritually sacrificed-angels in the shape of oxen, calves, sheep. I once wanted to become a vegetarian. I wanted everything-and I never got further than wanting.

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

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.