Bashevis Singer Quotes & Sayings

Writing has power, but its power has no vector. Writers can stir the mind, but they can't direct it. Time changes things, God changes things, the dictators change things, but writers can't change anything. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

Kindness, I've discovered, is everything in life. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

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

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

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

I believe in God but people are liars. It's those people who say they are appointed by God who I don't believe in. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

Actually, the true story of a person's life can never be written. It is beyond the power of literature. The full tale of any life would be both utterly boring and utterly unbelievable. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

You must believe in free will; there is no choice. — 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

In his enigmatic and cunning story 'The Crown of Feathers,' Isaac Bashevis Singer refuses to produce uncontradictory evidence of God's will but rather mixes all signals, jams the evidence, stalls every conclusion. — Edmund White

In God's mill even chaff becomes flour. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

A rock was sticking out of the water, jagged and pointed, covered with moss
a remnant of the Ice Age. It had withstood the rains, the snows, the frost, the heat. It was afraid of no one. It did not need redemption, it had already been redeemed. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

The Rabbi thought he saw an expression of perplexity in the golem's eyes. It seemed to the Rabbi that his eyes were asking, 'Who am I? Why am I here? What is the secret of my being? Rabbi Leib often saw the same bewilderment in the eyes of newborn children and even in the eyes of animals. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

Every body resisted (the slaughterer) in its own fashion, tried to escape and seemed to argue with the Creator to its last breath. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

What a strange power there is in clothing. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

What concrete steps can I take now?" I asked the voice, and it replied: "Go to a house of prayer and pray."
"Without faith?" I countered, and the voice said: "You have more faith than you know. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

From borrowing one gets poorer and from work one gets richer. — 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

The second half of the twentieth century is a complete flop. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

Misfortune draws people to religion and mysticism — Isaac Bashevis Singer

No doubt the world is entirely an imaginary world, but it is only once removed from the true world. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

I get up every morning with a desire to do some creative work. This desire is made of the same stuff as the sexual desire, the desire to make money, or any other desire. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

Shoulders are from God, and burdens too. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

[I]n adult literary fiction, stories are there on sufferance. Other things are felt to be more important: technique, style, literary knowingness. Adult readers who do deal in straightforward stories find themselves sidelined into a genre such as crime or science fiction, where no one expects literary craftsmanship. But stories are vital. Stories never fail us, because, as Isaac Bashevis Singer says, "events never grow stale." There's more wisdom in a story than in volumes of philosophy. [Contemporary writers, however,] take up their stories as with a pair of tongs. They're embarrassed by them. If they could write novels without stories in them, they would. Sometimes they do. — Philip Pullman

Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

There are 500 reasons I write for children ... Children read books, not reviews. They don't give a hoot about the critics ... They don't read to free themselves of guilt, to quench their thirst for rebellion, or to get rid of alienation. They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff ... They don't expect their beloved writer to redeem humanity. Young as they are, they know that it is not in his power. Only the adults have such childish illusions. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

Children have no use for psychology. They detest sociology. 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 allusions. — 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

If you keep on saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

There is great treasure there behind our skull and this is true about all of us. This little treasure has great, great powers, and I would say we only have learnt a very, very small part of what it can do. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

All that God does is for the good. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, no harmony between people. Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

While the poet entertains he continues to search for eternal truths, for the essence of being. In his own fashion he tries to solve the riddle of time and change, to find an answer to suffering, to reveal love in the very abyss of cruelty and injustice. 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

As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behaviour towards 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. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

One thing I found out then was that pity is a form of love and, actually, its highest expression.
A Tale of Two Sisters — Isaac Bashevis Singer

One has to trust that God knows how to manage the world. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

No technological achievements can mitigate the disappointment of modern man, his loneliness, his feeling of inferiority, and his fear of war, revolution and terror. Not only has our generation lost faith in Providence but also in man himself, in his institutions and often in those who are nearest to him. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

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 of cyanide, He and his wife and their son also carried such pills. We all lived with death, and I want you to know that one can fall in love with death. Whoever has loved death cannot love anything else any more. When the liberation came and they told me to leave, I didn't want to go. I clung to the threshold like an ox being dragged to the slaughter. ("Hanka") — 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

His eyes reflected a softness I had already forgotten in America. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

A freelance writer is paid per word, per piece, perhaps. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

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

If we have people with the power to tell a story, there will always be readers. — 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

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

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 wastepaper basket is the writer's best friend. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

There is a quiet humor in Yiddish and a gratitude for every day of life, every crumb of success, each encounter of love ... In a figurative way, Yiddish is the wise and humble language of us all, the idiom of a frightened and hopeful humanity. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

Two important things are to have a genuine interest in people and to be kind to them. Kindness, I've discovered, is everything. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

Originality is not seen in single words or even in sentences. Originality is the sum total of a man's thinking or his writing. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

We know what a person thinks not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his actions. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times. — 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

Literature is the memory of humanity. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

There must be a way for man to attain all possible pleasures, all the powers and knowledge that nature can grant him, and still serve God
a God who speaks in deeds, not in words, and whose vocabulary is the Cosmos. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

In our time, when the literature for adults is deteriorating, good books for children are the only hope, the only refuge. — 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

Literature can very well describe the absurd, but it should never become absurd itself — Isaac Bashevis Singer

The storyteller and poet of our time, as in any other time, must be an entertainer of the spirit in the full sense of the word, not just a preacher of social or political ideals. There is no paradise for bored readers and no excuse for tedious literature that does not intrigue the reader, uplift him, give him the joy and the escape that true art always grants. — 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

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

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

A story to me must have some surprise ... I must have a passion to write the story. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

Of course I believe in free will. Do we have a choice? — Isaac Bashevis Singer

Every human character appears only once in the history of human beings. And so does every event of love. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

God is a writer and we are both the heroes and the readers. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

There will never be any peace in the world as long as we eat animals. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

Life is God's novel. Let him write it. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

I don't study literature, I read it for enjoyment — Isaac Bashevis Singer

Sometimes you have the feeling that some little imp is standing behind you and dictating to you, but he gives it to you slowly, drop by drop. — 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

All is foreseen but the choice is given. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

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

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

A Marxist has never written a good novel. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

The waste basket is the writer's best friend. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

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

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

How can we speak of right and justice if we take an innocent creature and shed its blood? How can we pray to God for mercy if we ourselves have no mercy? Nobel laureate in literature. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

Each soul must accomplish its task, or it would not have been sent here. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

While facts never become obsolete or stale, commentaries always do. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

Those who run around with women don't walk tightropes. They find it hard enough to crawl on the ground. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

When we're trying to decide whether a leader is a good leader or a bad one, the question to ask is: 'Is he with the Ten Commandments or is he against them?' Then you can determine if the leader is a true messiah or another Stalin. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

Man is a disgusting thing. If you beat him he starts to scream, but if it is the other one who is beaten, then he constructs a theory. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

Atheism is a sort of crippled mysticism, [...] Blind nature has created all that we see, as well as all that we do not see - that's a mystical notion. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

No lepidopterist's collection in the entire world ... full if iridescent wings, is worth the life of a single butterfly. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

The Jewish people have been in exile for 2,000 years; they have lived in hundreds of countries, spoken hundreds of languages and still they kept their old language, Hebrew. They kept their Aramaic, later their Yiddish; they kept their books; they kept their faith. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

For those who are willing to make an effort, great miracles and wonderful treasures are in store. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

What happened was no accident. Everything was preordained. True, the will was free, but heaven also made its ordinances. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

If you hear I'm dead, don't come to my funeral. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

If one knew the truth how could there be freedom? If hell and paradise were in the middle of the marketplace, everyone would be a saint. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

The greatness of art is not to find what is common but what is unique. — 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. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

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

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

To be a vegetarian is to disagree - to disagree with the course of things today ... starvation, cruelty - we must make a statement against these things. Vegetarianism is my statement. And I think it's a strong one. — Isaac Bashevis Singer