Isaac Bashevis Singer

After the meal, the couple retired to their bedroom. Man and wife don’t usually lie together in the daytime, but when he went outside to close the shutters, she did not protest. As soon as he put his arm around her she was aroused, like all adolescent— since a woman who has not been pregnant, remains virginal forever.

Next to Elka lay a man’s form. Another in my place would have made an uproar, and enough noise to rouse the whole town, but the thought occurred to me that I might wake the child.

Who created all this? Yasha would ask himself. Was it the sun? If so, then perhaps the sun was God. Yasha had read in some holy book that Abraham had worshiped the sun before accepting the existence of Jehovah.

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.

Yasha spent his Sabbath talking and smoking cigarettes among musicians. To the earnest moralists who attempted to get him to change his ways, he would always answer: “When were you in heaven, and what did God look like?”

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

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

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

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.

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 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. We’ve got no choice.

When you betray somebody else, you also betray yourself.

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

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

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.

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

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

The main rule of a writer is never to pity your manuscript. If you see something is no good, throw it away and begin again.

[The] three characteristics a work of fiction must possess in order to be successful: 1. It must have a precise and suspenseful plot. 2. The author must feel a passionate urge to write it. 3. He must have the conviction, or at least the illusion, that he is the only one who can handle this particular theme.

The characters have their own lives and their own logic, and you have to act accordingly.