Talk:Isaac Bashevis Singer

Unsourced

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

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

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

• God sends burdens, and shoulders, too.

• 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?

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

• If you keep saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet.
  • If you keep on saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet.
    • I found several sources (e.g., MikeT's 12 April 2008 entry on the A Boat Against the Current blog) that identify the source of this quote as the 17 July 1978 episode of The Dick Cavett Show on PBS. --Hughh (talk) 19:25, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

• It seems that the analysis of character is the highest human entertainment. And literature does it, unlike gossip, without mentioning real names.

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

• Man cannot live without self-control

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

• 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.

• Sometimes love is stronger than a man's convictions.

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

• The New England conscience doesn't keep you from doing what you shouldn't — it just keeps you from enjoying it.

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

• 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.

• The wastebasket is a 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.

• 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.

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

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

• 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.