Jewish American author noted for his short stories
. He was one of the leading figures in the Yiddish literary movement
, and received the Nobel Prize in Literature
in 1978. He is also well known for his memoir of his life, A Day Of Pleasure.
Isaac Bashevis Singer was born in 1902 in Leoncin
village near Warsaw
, Poland
, then part of the Russian Empire
. A few years later, the family moved to a nearby Polish town of Radzymin
, which is often and erroneously given as his birthplace.
Life is God's novel. Let him write it.
I am thankful, of course, for the prize and thankful to God for each story, each idea, each word, each day.
When you betray somebody else, you also betray yourself.
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.
The analysis of character is the highest human entertainment.
A story to me means a plot where there is some surprise… Because that is how life is — full of surprises.
The Jewish people have been in exile for 2,000 years; they have lived in hundreds of countries, spoken hundreds of languages and still they kept their old language, Hebrew. They kept their Aramaic, later their Yiddish; they kept their books; they kept their faith.
Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.
Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge.