Isaac Bashevis Singer Quotes

55 Sourced Quotes

When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I am grown up, they call me a writer.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
We have to believe in free will. We've got no other choice.

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

Isaac Bashevis Singer
Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.

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

Isaac Bashevis Singer
I am not ashamed to admit that I belong to those who fantasize that literature is capable of bringing new horizons and new perspectives — philosophical, religious, aesthetical and even social. In the history of old Jewish literature there was never any basic difference between the poet and the prophet. Our ancient poetry often became law and a way of life.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
The genuine writer cannot ignore the fact that the family is losing its spiritual foundation.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
There are some who call Yiddish a dead language, but so was Hebrew called for two thousand years. It has been revived in our time in a most remarkable, almost miraculous way. Aramaic was certainly a dead language for centuries but then it brought to light the Zohar, a work of mysticism of sublime value.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
There is a permanent amnesia planted in us, which just as we keep forgetting our dreams, we sometimes keep on forgetting our reality.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
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.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
If Moses had been paid newspaper rates for the Ten Commandments, he might have written the Two Thousand Commandments.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
What's the good of not believing? Today it's your wife you don't believe; tomorrow it's God Himself you won't take stock in.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
The sexual organs are the most sensitive organs of the human being. They are not diplomats. They tell the truth.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
A story to me means a plot where there is some surprise… Because that is how life is — full of surprises.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
The very essence of literature is the war between emotion and intellect, between life and death. When literature becomes too intellectual - when it begins to ignore the passions, the emotions - it becomes sterile, silly, and actually without substance.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
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.

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

Isaac Bashevis Singer
When you betray somebody else, you also betray yourself.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
I started to "write" even before I knew the alphabet. I would dip a pen in ink and scribble. I also liked to draw — horses, houses, dogs. The Sabbath was an ordeal for me, because it is forbidden to write on that day.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
The truth is that what the great religions preached, the Yiddish-speaking people of the ghettos practiced day in and day out. They were the people of The Book in the truest sense of the word. They knew of no greater joy than the study of man and human relations, which they called Torah, Talmud, Mussar, Cabala.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
Literature has neglected the old and their emotions. The novelists never told us that in love, as in other matters, the young are just beginners and that the art of loving matures with age and experience.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
The pessimism of the creative person is not decadence but a mighty passion for the redemption of man.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
Even in the worm that crawls in the earth there glows a divine spark. When you slaughter a creature, you slaughter God.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
Whatever doesn't really happen is dreamed at night. It happens to one if it doesn't happen to another, tomorrow if not today, or a century hence if not next year.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
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.

Isaac Bashevis Singer