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If Moses had been paid newspaper rates for the Ten Commandments, he might have written the Two Thousand Commandments.

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
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Screenwriter
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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
Thousand
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Written
Moses
Literature
Newspaper
Two
Commandments
Might
Newspapers
Ten
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Paid

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The ghetto was not only a place of refuge for a persecuted minority but a great experiment in peace, in self-discipline and in humanism. As such it still exists and refuses to give up in spite of all the brutality that surrounds it. I was brought up among those people.
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It seems that the analysis of character is the highest human entertainment. And literature does it, unlike gossip, without mentioning names.
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Every body resisted (the slaughterer) in its own fashion, tried to escape and seemed to argue with the Creator to its last breath.
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Each soul must accomplish its task, or it would not have been sent here.
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Two important things are to have a genuine interest in people and to be kind to them. Kindness, I've discovered, is everything.
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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.
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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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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.]
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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.
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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.
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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.
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A story to me means a plot where there is some surprise... Because this is how life is full of surprises.
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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)
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In relation to them (animals), all people are Nazis for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka.
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Children read books, not reviews. They don't give a hoot about critics.
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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.
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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.
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They still believe in God, the family, angels, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other obsolete stuff.
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Heaven and earth conspire that everything which has been, be rooted and reduced to dust. Only the dreamers, who dream while awake, call back the shadows of the past and braid nets from the unspun thread.
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The New England conscience doesn't keep you from doing what you shouldn't - it just keeps you from enjoying it.
Isaac Bashevis Singer