Isaac Bashevis Singer Quotes
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A story to me means a plot where there is some surprise. Because that is how life is – full of surprises.
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There are some who call Yiddish a dead language, but so was Hebrew called for two thousand years. It has been revived in our time in a most remarkable, almost miraculous way. Aramaic was certainly a dead language for centuries but then it brought to light the Zohar, a work of mysticism of sublime value.
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I have many times resigned myself to never finding a true way out. But a new hope always emerges telling me that it is not yet too late for all of us to take stock and make a decision. I was brought up to believe in free will.
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The greatness of art is not to find what is common but what is unique.
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Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.
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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.
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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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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.
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What nature delivers to us is never stale. Because what nature creates has eternity in it.
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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.
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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.
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Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge.
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I am not ashamed to admit that I belong to those who fantasize that literature is capable of bringing new horizons and new perspectives - philosophical, religious, aesthetical and even social. 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.
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Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.
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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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Take three quarts of duck's milk...
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I started to 'write' even before I knew the alphabet. I would dip a pen in ink and scribble. I also liked to draw - horses, houses, dogs. The Sabbath was an ordeal for me, because it is forbidden to write on that day.