Isaac Bashevis Singer Quotes - Page 2

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• 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, Book, Believe

  41 Copy quote

• Kindness, I've discovered, is everything in life.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Kindness, Generosity

  20 Copy quote

• But if we have people who have the power to tell a story, there will always be readers.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  People, Stories, Reader

  "Isaac Bashevis Singer: Conversations".

  36 Copy quote

• 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.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Animal, Men, Principles

  "Enemies, A Love Story" by Isaac Bashevis Singer, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, (p. 257), 1972.

  63 Copy quote

• Men want all women to lie down as whores and get up as virgins.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Lying, Men, Want

  17 Copy quote

• The greatness of art is not to find what is common but what is unique.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Art, Unique, Greatness

  "Isaac Bashevis Singer Talks …About Everything". Interview with Richard Burgin, www.nytimes.com. November 26, 1978.

  16 Copy quote

• 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

  Country, Book, Years

  29 Copy quote

• Of course I believe in free will. Do we have a choice?

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Believe, Choices, Free Will

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Liars, Lying, Writing

  "TIME" Magazine, July 18, 1983.

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  Writing, Successful, Order

  Isaac Bashevis Singer, Raphael Soyer (1981). “Lost in America”, Doubleday Books

  7 Copy quote

• The soul never dies and the body is never really alive.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Soul, Alive, Body

  "Lessons About Life, Love, Hate and Human Experience". Book by Ifeanyi Egeru, p. 54, 2008.

  13 Copy quote

• The waste basket is the writer's best friend.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Friendship, Writing, Waste

  10 Copy quote

• God gave us so many emotions, and so many strong ones. Every human being, even if he is an idiot, is a millionaire in emotions.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Strong, Emotion, Idiot

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Disappointment, War, Loneliness

  Isaac Bashevis Singer, Joseph C. Landis (1986). “Aspects of I.B. Singer”

  5 Copy quote

• While facts never become obsolete or stale, commentaries always do.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Facts, Obsolete, Stale

  Isaac Bashevis Singer, Grace Farrell (1992). “Isaac Bashevis Singer: Conversations”, p.37, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  9 Copy quote

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

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Money, Wealth, Get Rich

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Inspirational, Purpose, Given

  Isaac Bashevis Singer, Grace Farrell (1992). “Isaac Bashevis Singer: conversations”, Univ Pr of Mississippi

  7 Copy quote

• Shoulders are from God and burdens too.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Burden, Shoulders

  Isaac Bashevis Singer (2004). “Collected Stories: Gimpel the Fool to the Letter Writer”

  5 Copy quote

• A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Writing, Stories, Literature

  19 Copy quote

• 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

  Fashion, Plato, War

  Isaac Bashevis Singer, Joseph C. Landis (1986). “Aspects of I.B. Singer”

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Uplifting, Art, Bored

  Isaac Bashevis Singer (1982). “The collected stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer”, Vintage

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• All that God does is for the good.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  God, Doe, Good God

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• We are all God's creatures-that we pray to God for mercy and justice while we continue to eat the flesh of animals that are slaughtered on our account is not consistent.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Animal, Vegetarianism, Justice

  8 Copy quote

• I know as a writer how valuable a tool is the wastebasket. Perhaps God throws away many experiments before He finds the right expression. Perhaps we are the discards - or we could be the part He keeps. This mystery is what keeps us all going, to see what happens in the next chapter.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Expression, Next Chapter, Tools

  "|Isaac Singer's Promised City". "City Journal", Summer 1997.

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Blood, Justice, Literature

  11 Copy quote

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