All that God does is for the good.
One has to trust that God knows how to manage the world.
Whatever doesn’t really happen is dreamed at night. It happens to one if it doesn’t happen to another, tomorrow if not today, or a century hence if not next year.
All is foreseen but the choice is given.
How can we speak of right and justice if we take an innocent creature and shed its blood? How can we pray to God for mercy if we ourselves have no mercy? Nobel laureate in literature.
There is a plan to this universe. There is a high intelligence, maybe even a purpose, but it’s given to us on the installment plan.
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.
Writing has power, but its power has no vector. Writers can stir the mind, but they can’t direct it. Time changes things, God changes things, the dictators change things, but writers can’t change anything.
I get up every morning with a desire to do some creative work. This desire is made of the same stuff as the sexual desire, the desire to make money, or any other desire.
The Yiddish mentality is not haughty. It does not take victory for granted. It does not demand and command but it muddles through, sneaks by, smuggles itself amidst the powers of destruction, knowing somewhere that God’s plan for Creation is still at the very beginning.
There must be a way for man to attain all possible pleasures, all the powers and knowledge that nature can grant him, and still serve God – a God who speaks in deeds, not in words, and whose vocabulary is the Cosmos.
To me the Yiddish language and the conduct of those who spoke it are identical.
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.
What’s the good of not believing? Today it’s your wife you don’t believe; tomorrow it’s God Himself you won’t take stock in.
When the time comes I will go joyfully. Whatever may be there, it will be real, without complication, without ridicule, without deception.
The soul never dies and the body is never really alive.
Sometimes you have the feeling that some little imp is standing behind you and dictating to you, but he gives it to you slowly, drop by drop.
We are all God’s creatures-that we pray to God for mercy and justice while we continue to eat the flesh of animals that are slaughtered on our account is not consistent.
The characters have their own lives and their own logic, and you have to act accordingly.
When a day passes, it is no longer there. What remains of it? Nothing more than a story. If stories weren’t told or books weren’t written, man would live like the beasts, only for the day.