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

Isaac Bashevis Singer

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Isaac Bashevis Singer
Age: 87 †
Born: 1904
Born: July 14
Died: 1991
Died: July 24
Author
Autobiographer
Esperantist
Journalist
Novelist
Prosaist
Screenwriter
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Writer
Isaac Bashevis-Singer
Yitsḥoḳ Basheṿis
Yitsḥaḳ Basheṿis-Zinger
Yitsḥaḳ Basheṿis- Zinger
I. B. Singer
Itzhak Bashevis Singer
Yitsḥoḳ Bashevis-Zinger
Isaac Bashevis
Yitsḥaḳ Basheṿis
Yitsḥoḳ Bashevis- Zinger
Basically
Mankind
Writer
Literature
Story
Stories
Teller
Writing
Redeemer
Good
Scholar

More quotes by Isaac Bashevis Singer

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In the history of old Jewish literature there was never any basic difference between the poet and the prophet. Our ancient poetry often became law and a way of life.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
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When literature becomes overly erudite, it means that interest in the art has gone and curiosity about the artist is what's important. It becomes a kind of idolatry.
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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? Nobel laureate in literature.
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If Moses had been paid newspaper rates for the Ten Commandments, he might have written the Two Thousand Commandments.
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When a day passes, it is no longer there. What remains of it? Nothing more than a story. If stories weren't told or books weren't written, man would live like the beasts, only for the day.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
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The soul never dies and the body is never really alive.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
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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.
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If you keep on saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet... [at least for your own situation. Blind optimism is just as foolish. The solution is a rigorously balanced, rational outlook.]
Isaac Bashevis Singer
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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.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
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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.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
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No lepidopterist's collection in the entire world...full if iridescent wings, is worth the life of a single butterfly.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
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Kindness, I've discovered, is everything in life.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
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I am not ashamed to admit that I belong to those who fantasize that literature is capable of bringing new horizons and new perspectives--philosophical, religious, aesthetical and even social.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
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Children read books, not reviews. They don't give a hoot about critics.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
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A Marxist has never written a good novel.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
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One can find in the Yiddish tongue and in the Yiddish spirit expressions of pious joy, lust for life, longing for the Messiah, patience and deep appreciation of human individuality.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
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I don't invent characters because the Almightly has already invented millions... Just like experts at fingerprints do not create fingerprints but learn how to read them.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
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There is no death. How can there be death if everything is part of the Godhead? The soul never dies and the body is never really alive.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
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Even in the worm that crawls in the earth there glows a divine spark. When you slaughter a creature, you slaughter God.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
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Originality is not seen in single words or even in sentences. Originality is the sum total of a man's thinking or his writing.
Isaac Bashevis Singer