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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.

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
Translator
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
Character
Unlike
Human
Analysis
Humans
Entertainment
Without
Highest
Names
Literature
Seems
Mentioning
Doe
Gossip

More quotes by Isaac Bashevis Singer

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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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Men want all women to lie down as whores and get up as virgins.
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A Marxist has never written a good novel.
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The soul never dies and the body is never really alive.
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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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Of course I believe in free will. Do we have a choice?
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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.
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The analysis of character is the highest human entertainment.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
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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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Literature has neglected the old and their emotions. The novelists never told us that in love, as in other matters, the young are just beginners and that the art of loving matures with age and experience.
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.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
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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.
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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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.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
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From borrowing one gets poorer and from work one gets richer.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
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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.
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No technological achievements can mitigate the disappointment of modern man, his loneliness, his feeling of inferiority, and his fear of war, revolution and terror. Not only has our generation lost faith in Providence but also in man himself, in his institutions and often in those who are nearest to him.
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For those who are willing to make an effort, great miracles and wonderful treasures are in store.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
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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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To me the Yiddish language and the conduct of those who spoke it are identical.
Isaac Bashevis Singer