Isaac Bashevis Singer

“Misfortune draws people to religion and mysticism”

“Habría que sentir una total indiferencia hacia el hombre y el animal para conseguir ser feliz.”

“Es imposible escribir la verdadera historia de la vida de una persona. Supera el poder de la literatura. El relato completo de cualquier vida sería absolutamente aburrido además de absolutamente increíble.”

“If you believe in God, then He exists.”

“literature can very well describe the absurd, but it should never become absurd itself”

“Even the worm that crawls in the Earth there glows a divine spark. When you slaughter a creature, you slaughter your God.”

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

“As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, no harmony between people. Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.”

“When a writer tries to explain too much, he's out of time before he begins.”

“When a human kills an animal for food, he is neglecting his own hunger for justice. Man prays for mercy, but is unwilling to extend it to others. Why should man then expect mercy from God? It's unfair to expect something that you are not willing to give. It is inconsistent. I can never accept inconsistency or injustice. Even if it comes from God. If there would come a voice from God saying, "I'm against vegetarianism!" I would say, "Well, I am for it!" This is how strongly I feel in this regard.”

“Along with the atom, the personality of the Homo Sapiens has been splitting...”

“En pensée, Herman fit l'oraison funèbre de la souris qui avait partagé une partie de sa vie et qui, à cause de lui, avait quitté cette terre. "Tous ces érudits, tous ces philosophes, les dirigeants de la planète, que savent-ils de quelqu'un comme toi? Ils se sont persuadé que l'homme, espèce pécheresse entre toutes, domine la création. Toutes les autres créatures n'auraient été créées que pour lui procurer de la nourritures, des fourrures, pour être martyrisées, exterminées. Pour ces créatures, tous les humains sont nazis; pour les animaux, c'est un éternel Treblinka.”

“But my gloom did not lessen. I knew that I'd had a bad dream, and I stood in the dark trying to recollect it. The second I closed my eyes, I was with the dead. They did things words cannot express. They spoke madness. ("Hanka")”

“Yes, I lay in my grave. But if you lie in a grave long enough, you get accustomed to it and you don't want to part from it. He had given me a pill of cyanide, He and his wife and their son also carried such pills. We all lived with death, and I want you to know that one can fall in love with death. Whoever has loved death cannot love anything else any more. When the liberation came and they told me to leave, I didn't want to go. I clung to the threshold like an ox being dragged to the slaughter. ("Hanka")”

“When the ship approached the equator, I stopped going out on deck in the daytime. The sun burned like a flame. The days had shortened and night came swiftly. One moment it was light, the next it was dark. The sun did not set but fell into the water like a meteor. Late in the evening, when I went out briefly, a hot wind slapped my face. From the ocean came a roar of passions that seemed to have broken through all barriers:'We mus procreate and multiply! We must exhaust all the powers of lust!' The waves glowed like lava, and I imagined I could see multitudes of living beings - algae, whales, sea monsters - reveling in an orgy, from the surface to the bottom of the sea. Immortality was the law here. The whole planet raged with animation. At times, I heard my name in the clamor: the spirit of the abyss calling me to join them in their nocturnal dance. ("Hanka")”

“If you hear I'm dead, don't come to my funeral.”

“What do they know-all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world - about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.”

“Shoulders are from God, and burdens too.”

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

“Kindness, I’ve discovered, is everything in life.”

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

“Every human character appears only once in the history of human beings. And so does every event of love.”

“Children have no use for psychology. They detest sociology. They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff. When a book is boring, they yawn openly. They don't expect their writer to redeem humanity, but leave to adults such childish allusions.”

“But what about the creatures whose flesh he's carrying there? A few days ago they were alive. They too have souls. They too are God’s children. They were quite possibly made of better material than human beings. Since they were sinless, they were certainly more innocent. But day after day they are ritually sacrificed-angels in the shape of oxen, calves, sheep. I once wanted to become a vegetarian. I wanted everything-and I never got further than wanting.”

“No doubt the world is entirely an imaginary world, but it is only once removed from the true world.”

“A freelance writer is paid per word, per piece, perhaps.”

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

“We all play chess with Fate as partner. He makes a move, we make a move. He tries to checkmate us in three moves, we try to prevent it. We know we can't win, but we're driven to give him a good fight.”

“Children don t read to find their identity to free themselves from guilt to quench the thirst for rebellion or to get rid of alienation. They have no use for psychology.... They still believe in God the family angels devils witches goblins logic clarity punctuation and other such obsolete stuff.... When a book is boring they yawn openly. They don t expect their writer to redeem humanity but leave to adults such childish illusions. ”

“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.”

“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.”

“What a strange power there is in clothing.”

“When you betray somebody else, you also betray yourself”

“Night is a time of rigor, but also of mercy. There are truths which one can see only when it’s dark”

“We have to believe in free-will. We've got no choice.”

“Sometimes love is stronger than a man's convictions. ”

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

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

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

“Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper.”

“In the half darkness I winked to my other self, my mad dictator, and congratulated him on his droll victory. I closed my eyes and felt the warmth flowing from Shosha's head to my face. What did I have to lose? Nothing more than what everyone loses anyway.”

“What do these children do without storybooks?" Naftali asked. And Reb Zebulun replied: "They have to make do. Storybooks aren't bread. You can live without them." I couldn't live without them." Naftali said.”

“There are 500 reasons I write for children.... Children read books, not reviews. They don't give a hoot about the critics.... They don't read to free themselves of guilt, to quench their thirst for rebellion, or to get rid of alienation. They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff.... They don't expect their beloved writer to redeem humanity. Young as they are, they know that it is not in his power. Only the adults have such childish illusions.”

“In their behavior toward creatures, all men are Nazis. Human beings see oppression vividly when they're the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought.”

“The wastepaper basket is the writer’s best friend. ”

“As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behaviour towards 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.”

“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.”

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