Isaac Bashevis Singer Quotes
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In many ways, astrology, numerology and palmistry are corruptions of the occult because they have attempted to make a practice out of something that is essentially imaginative.
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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.
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While facts never become obsolete or stale, commentaries always do.
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Those who run around with women don't walk tightropes. They find it hard enough to crawl on the ground.
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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.
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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.
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A Marxist has never written a good novel.
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We know what a person thinks not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his actions.
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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.
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The greatness of art is not to find what is common but what is unique.
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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.
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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.
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They still believe in God, the family, angels, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other obsolete stuff.
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There will be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is.
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Men want all women to lie down as whores and get up as virgins.
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What nature delivers to us is never stale. Because what nature creates has eternity in it.
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In relation to them (animals), all people are Nazis for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka.
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But if we have people who have the power to tell a story, there will always be readers.
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But my gloom did not lessen. I knew that I'd had a bad dream, and I stood in the dark trying to recollect it. The second I closed my eyes, I was with the dead. They did things words cannot express. They spoke madness. ("Hanka")
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Each soul must accomplish its task, or it would not have been sent here.
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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.
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No matter how much you know a human being, you don't know him enough.
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Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.
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In God's mill even chaff becomes flour.
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What a strange power there is in clothing.
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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.
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I have heard from my father and mother all the answers that faith in God could offer to those who doubt and search for the truth. In our home and in many other homes the eternal questions were more actual than the latest news in the Yiddish newspaper. In spite of all the disenchantments and all my skepticism I believe that the nations can learn much from those Jews, their way of thinking, their way of bringing up children, their finding happiness where others see nothing but misery and humiliation.
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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.
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From borrowing one gets poorer and from work one gets richer.
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What nature creates has eternity in it.
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