Quotes from Isaac Bashevis Singer

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

No matter how much you know a human being, you don't know him enough.

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.

Two important things are to have a genuine interest in people and to be kind to them. Kindness, I've discovered, is everything.

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

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.

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

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

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

The genuine writer cannot ignore the fact that the family is losing its spiritual foundation.

No lepidopterist's collection in the entire world...full if iridescent wings, is worth the life of a single butterfly.

Actually, the true story of a person's life can never be written. It is beyond the power of literature. The full tale of any life would be both utterly boring and utterly unbelievable.

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

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

Whenever I'm in trouble, I pray. And because I'm in trouble all of the time, I pray almost constantly.

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

In our time, when the literature for adults is deteriorating, good books for children are the only hope, the only refuge.

When the time comes I will go joyfully. Whatever may be there, it will be real, without complication, without ridicule, without deception.

Even in the worm that crawls in the earth there glows a divine spark. When you slaughter a creature, you slaughter God.

The analysis of character is the highest human entertainment.

Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.

The waste basket is the writer's best friend.

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

One has to trust that God knows how to manage the world.