Isaac Bashevis Singer Quotes

55 Sourced Quotes

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
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
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
The ghetto was not only a place of refuge for a persecuted minority but a great experiment in peace, in self-discipline and in humanism. As such it still exists and refuses to give up in spite of all the brutality that surrounds it. I was brought up among those people.

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

Isaac Bashevis Singer
Strange as these words may sound I often play with the idea that when all the social theories collapse and wars and revolutions leave humanity in utter gloom, the poet — whom Plato banned from his Republic — may rise up to save us all.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
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.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
No matter how much you know a human being, you don't know him enough.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
It is written, better to be a fool all your days than for one hour to be evil. You are not a fool. They are the fools. For he who causes his neighbor to feel shame loses Paradise himself.

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
The more you see what other people do, the more you learn about yourself.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
It is a fact that the classics of Yiddish literature are also the classics of the modern Hebrew literature.

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
It is a general rule that when the grain of truth cannot be found, men will swallow great helpings of falsehood.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
Yiddish has not yet said its last word. It contains treasures that have not been revealed to the eyes of the world. It was the tongue of martyrs and saints, of dreamers and Cabalists — rich in humor and in memories that mankind may never forget. In a figurative way, Yiddish is the wise and humble language of us all, the idiom of frightened and hopeful Humanity.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
As much as I can give of myself I give of myself. There's no reason why not. And when I have to hide something, I let the character speak.

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 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 genuine writer cannot ignore the fact that the family is losing its spiritual foundation.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
There is a plan to this universe. There is a high intelligence, maybe even a purpose, but it's given to us on the installment plan.

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
Heaven and earth conspire that everything which has been, be rooted and reduced to dust. Only the dreamers, who dream while awake, call back the shadows of the past and braid nets from the unspun thread.

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

Isaac Bashevis Singer
When the time comes I will go joyfully. Whatever may be there, it will be real, without complication, without ridicule, without deception.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
To me the Yiddish language and the conduct of those who spoke it are identical.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
Three characteristics a work of fiction must possess in order to be successful:

1. It must have a precise and suspenseful plot.

2. The author must feel a passionate urge to write it.

3. He must have the conviction, or at least the illusion, that he is the only one who can handle this particular theme.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
When a writer tries to explain too much, he's out of time before he begins.

Isaac Bashevis Singer