11 Isaac Bashevis Singer Quotes on Writing

Isaac Bashevis Singer quotes on writing

5. 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.

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

13. We write not only for children but also for their parents. They, too, are serious children.

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

16. I started to 'write' even before I knew the alphabet. I would dip a pen in ink and scribble. I also liked to draw - horses, houses, dogs. The Sabbath was an ordeal for me, because it is forbidden to write on that day.

17. The storyteller and poet of our time, as in any other time, must be an entertainer of the spirit in the full sense of the word, not just a preacher of social or political ideals. There is no paradise for bored readers and no excuse for tedious literature that does not intrigue the reader, uplift him, give him the joy and the escape that true art always grants. Nevertheless, it is also true that the serious writer of our time must be deeply concerned about the problems of his generation. He cannot but see that the power of religion, especially belief in revelation, is weaker today than it was in any other epoch in human history. More and more children grow up without faith in God, without belief in reward and punishment, in the immortality of the soul and even in the validity of ethics. The genuine writer cannot ignore the fact that the family is losing its spiritual foundation.

18. 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. In their despair a number of those who no longer have confidence in the leadership of our society look up to the writer, the master of words. They hope against hope that the man of talent and sensitivity can perhaps rescue civilization. Maybe there is a spark of the prophet in the artist after all.

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

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

43. 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.

44. The wastebasket is a writer's best friend.