Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991)

"It's remarkable how poor language is, particularly in words able to convey emotions. Even the restricted number of such words that do exist--such as joy, anxiety, happiness, satisfaction, peace of mind, unrest, ambition, love, hate, and so on--are so vague, ambiguous, and unspecific that they are practically meaningless. When we say about people that they are chopping wood, drinking water, eating bread, studying geometry, or that they are letter carriers, tailors, or farmers, we know much more about them than if we were to say that they are pleased, happy, unhappy, in love, astounded, insulted, impatient, loyal, proud, cheerful, or sad. We have to use many words--often hundreds or thousands--to describe a state of mind, and this often requires artistic talent.

Those that take an interest in literature and its methods know that the greatest masters refrained from calling emotions by name and instead described the circumstances that evoked these emotions in their countless variations. What's more, no words grow so stale and cliche-ridden with time as those that express emotions. 'I regret,' 'I am pleased,' 'I am happy,' . . . When we say a certain man is suffering, he might as easily have cancer as have not received enough votes to become the president of a synagogue. . . .

Why aren't there more words to convey our emotions? . . . The reason is that the emotions are so specific--so dependent upon the individual character, personality, time, place and circumstance--that no generalization can describe them, and words are generalizations. Emotion is a phantom that doesn't let itself be weighed, measured, counted or photographed. . . . Emotions, like the molecules of a protoplasm, come in complete sets, chains, or clusters. Most of them aren't expressed but suppressed.

Anyone who wants to write for children must remember that children are frequently no poorer in emotions than adults. Often, a child's emotions are stronger and even more complex, but the child is less inclined to let itself be duped by imprecise words and abstractions. You can speak to grownups about love in general and they will form the illusion that they know what you're talking about, but the child insists on immediately knowing who loves whom. Children want to hear stories because they instinctively know that life is made up of stories. Children know that every love is different and that each encounter between people represents a kind of truth that has never occurred before, nor will ever occur again."

"Instead of mourning our fate and brooding about who reads our books, we should concentrate all our energies upon the spiritual value of our writing. First let there be a book, and then we can search for a reader. Yiddish must orient itself in two directions, both of which it has avoided until now. Yiddish must orient itself in two directions, both of which it has avoided until now. First, it must become what it was intended to be, an instrument of Jewishness. Second, it must, in the name of Jewishness, encounter the world and all its vanities, illusions, temptations, and adventures. The prophet who wanted to save Nineveh could not remain in the bowels of the whale. He had to come to Nineveh and face it and its inhabitants. A literature that aspires nowadays to awaken and bind together the Jews of the world should not remain restricted to little towns and should not cultivate a primitivist attitude. If a revitalized Jewishness is destine to come into existence with meaning for modern Jews, it must be I'm the form of a great spiritual vision and awakening.

We do not have to be anxious about our voice being heard. Our worry should be whether our voice deserves to be heard. Do we really have something to say and to reveal? We do not have to doubt that there will be ears. The question is rather whether there will be music." (Emphasis mine)

"Finally my conclusion was that the power of philosophy lay in its attack upon reason, not in the building of systems. None of the systems could be taken seriously. They did not help one manage one's life. The human intellect confronted existence, and existence stubbornly refused to be systematized."

"God was for me an eternal belle-lettrist. His main attribute was creativity. God was creativity and what he created was made of the same stuff as he. It shared his desire: to create again. I quoted to myself that passage from the Midrash which says that God created and destroyed many worlds before creating this one. Like my brother and myself, God threw his unsuccessful works into the waste basket. . . . Yes, God was a creator, and that which he created had a passion to create. Each atom, each molecule had creative needs and possibilities. The sun, the planets, the fixed stars, the whole cosmos seethed with creativity and creative fantasies. I could feel this turmoil within myself."