Isaac Bashevis Singer

The second half of the twentieth century is a complete flop.

We must believe in free will, we have no choice.

We have to believe in free-will. We’ve got no choice.

Sometimes love is stronger than a man’s convictions.

When you betray somebody else, you also betray yourself.

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

I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens.

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

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

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

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

The analysis of character is the highest human entertainment.

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

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.

The New England conscience doesn’t keep you from doing what you shouldn’t – it just keeps you from enjoying it.

If you keep saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet.

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.

A story to me means a plot where there is some surprise. Because that is how life is – full of surprises.

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

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.

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

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

Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge.

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

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

Originality is not seen in single words or even in sentences. Originality is the sum total of a man’s thinking or his writing.

Kindness, I’ve discovered, is everything in life.

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

Life is God’s novel. Let him write it.

The waste basket is the writer’s best friend.

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.