Quotes from Isaac Bashevis Singer

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.

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

Various philosophers and religious leaders tried to convince their disciples and followers that animals are nothing more than machines without a soul, without feelings. However, anyone who has ever lived with an animal--be it a dog, a bird, or even a mouse--knows that this theory is a brazen lie, invented to justify cruelty.

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

As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behavior toward creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right.

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.

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

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.

Children don't read to find their identity. They don't read to free themselves of guilt, to quench the thirst for rebellion, or to get rid of alienation. They have no use for psychology. They detest sociology…. They still believe in good, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation and other such obsolete stuff.

Buildings will collapse, power plants will stop generating electricity. Generals will drop atomic bombs on their own populations. Mad revolutionaries will run in the streets, crying fantastic slogans. I have often thought it would begin in New York. This metropolis has all the symptoms of a mind gone berserk.

The waste basket is the writer's best friend.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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 motions -- it becomes sterile, silly, and actually without substance.

We have to believe in free will. Weve got no choice.

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

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.

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

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.

To be a vegetarian is to disagree - to disagree with the course of things today... starvation, cruelty - we must make a statement against these things. Vegetarianism is my statement. And I think it's a strong one.