Immigrants To The United States

"I turn to Fradel Schtok and know that another woman writer experienced similar conflicts over mame-loshn. I read her stories of the shtetl and America and see the two worlds between which she was caught...All these Jewish women-Julia, Nadia, Patti, Gina, Fradel, Kadia-are my ancestors. They are mayne bobes, mumes, shvester, my grandmothers, aunts, sisters. Mir darfn zikh bakenen. We need to become acquainted."

"If Mr. Kasher could have gotten rid of just one word in the English language, he would have banished the word funny. (first lines of "In a Living Room" 1947 story)"

"All this talk agitated Nessi. It seemed to her as though they were taking something holy and defiling it. Her train, her happiness. ("The First Train")"

"Don’t worry that at the moment you’re not writing. Live a little! Nothing will be lost—it will come back to you with interest when you’re back at your desk"

"I salute you as a writer and urge you to write and write, for the good of Yiddish literature. Because your intellect, your fresh words and images, the flights of your creativity, are original, contemporary, and I would say zaftik [juicy]! We need you!"

"One must be stubborn to achieve one's goals, to be nobody's fool. ("A Cut")"

"Everything you write is not only well written, but also interesting and easy to read. These qualities don’t always go together, but in your work they do."

"The unwritten letters are the most interesting; they come spontaneously, straight from the heart, and swim away with all the unwritten stories, the uninvented poems."

"The young man wiped the fingers of his hand with his handkerchief, as if he wanted to wipe away the shame"

"The sorrow of all the poor people of the hill fell upon Feyge-Tsipe and spread across the whole house."

"I’m glad you’ve undertaken to have your work translated into English. It’s important both for you and for Yiddish literature. The world should see what we’re made of, and know that we’re no less modern than other literatures."

"in a certain sense maybe I am a recluse. For me it’s enough to write a story and have it appear in a journal. Beyond that, being in public scares me. bl"

"At times I feel very pessimistic—for whom are we writing? Then I think of you—you, who give so much and receive so little, who go on with your work—and in Yiddish! Who am I to complain? bl"

"“You must understand,” she [Mrs. Zagretti] says, “the fly was a kind of soul mate for me. Whenever I came home it flew to greet me. It followed me from room to room. At night when I got into bed it would circle around the night light. Around and around and around — it must have hatched in late summer so that its life was just beginning when all the others of its species had already died. I could feel the tragedy of being left all alone in the world — all ties severed and paths overgrown, all friends and relations annihilated without a trace, condemned by fate to live out its one and only life in anguish . . .” Betty wants to say that she knows many people who were orphaned and left alone in the world not because of a mistake in the calendar but because of the calculated, brutal, organized murder of a people."

"“A house without a picture, my mother used to say, is like a heart without a god,” Mrs. Zagretti says. “When I pray to God, I need a picture in front of my eyes.” “We Jews carry God in our hearts,” Betty replies with an edge in her voice."

""I understand people, maybe not with my brains but with something my ancestors planted in me." (Mrs. Zagretti)"

"How wonderful to have a friend who reads, who understands, who offers a critical word that hits the nail on the head."

"The friendship has never crossed over the fence...The garden was the intermediary that brought them together. As the garden blossomed, so did the friendship — but never did it cross their thresholds."

"I discovered that some of the clearest and most practical answers to certain of my questions were being given by my wife in the "Recipes for Living and Loving," which she was composing for the benefit of those who came to her for psychological aid and counsel. Some of her recipes (for example, those for the Transformation of Energy) have found their way, almost unmodified, into my phantasy. Others have been changed and developed to suit the needs of my imaginary society and to fit into its peculiar culture. This literary debt is one which, along with all my other non-literary debts to the author of You Are Not the Target, I am happy to acknowledge."

"“Life, my dear, is a garden full of all kinds of plants,” Mrs. Zagretti said. “People, too, are plants that must be cultivated if they are to reach their highest potential.”"

"His laughter is meant to hide the greed that has begun to glint in his eyes. ("A Fur Salesman")"

"the garden rewards me for my efforts. Red and yellow roses lift their faces to me, and the grass is green. Everything wants to live and to thrive. It’s a Jewish garden, with a little of this and a little of that. Everything comes together harmoniously."

"dancing around the tree as if it were a pagan god."

"How well you know people, how clearly you see them inside and out! How romantic, visionary, and thoughtful you are—you know daily life so well, you see it so splendidly, and you describe it with both a poetic tongue and a realistic flair for detail."

"Molodovsky, who knew the Jewish sources and spent many years teaching in Jewish schools, turned poetry into a conduit through which the biblical matriarchs could express their fellow feeling for every kind of sorrow"

""Anyone who says that figs from a can are as good as figs from a tree isn’t worthy of a real, natural fruit — a fruit grown without chemicals or artificial fertilizer, a fruit as God created it." (Mrs. Zagretti)"

"It’s marvelous when you think of words. If you just think of any one word, not just thinking about how it came about in the expression, but just what your mouth does to pronounce that word (1968)"

"focus your mind and respect your body. But mostly love your heart. I think that is where to begin, from there and then it goes out...Love your heart. It really is to love yourself to begin with and help everybody else in doing the same. But the heart being the center. You can focus your mind. You can respect your body. All of that is important. Then if you love your heart, this can be transmitted to other people. I mean you can help anybody that wants to do the same."

"Infinity and eternity are the limits of imagination. You can project your imagination into the past or into the future; you can destroy an old image that has troubled you or create a new one that will rejoice you."

"We should train ourselves in the use of imagination when we are well, so that we are ready to use it when we are not."

"this transformation is really the key now, isn’t it, to our living: to be able to transform. (1968)"

"Like any other faculty, imagination can be starved and suffocated or stimulated and nourished."

"our society can improve only if the next generation is given the chance, through loving and intelligent education, to be better developed than the present one."

"Service or giving is the other side of receiving. Giving and receiving is a full circle: a full circle feels more natural than a half circle."

"Self-questioning is a first step on the path to self-awareness. And this awareness is a precondition for making the most of our lives. It is our protection against unnecessary mental suffering and physical illness, and our aid in coping with these when they cannot be avoided. Being aware is the way toward finding fulfillment in our relationships with others, of bringing all our store of healthy energy to living and working."

"There is danger in everything that we do. We are to eat food otherwise we don’t live and sometimes we eat food that is very damaging...Or addicted to food. Oh, yes, addiction to food is unfortunately really grave, also to alcohol or to anything else. But these drugs can be such an extraordinary gift, really. Some, not all drugs. Again, how can we speak about "drugs"? It is like speaking about the human race—each person is different, each drug is different!"

"creativity is not the monopoly of the Shakespeares and Einsteins of this world. There is a science of intelligent living, an art of being fully human, in which we all can and ought to be creative. To use our imagination is part of the total art of being. To imagine other people's imagination is part of the art of being with others."

"Often a question, the first one, is not the real question at all but a substitute which our unconscious self has artfully framed to protect our superficial comfort from being disturbed by a deeper, more troubling doubt."

"You alone can change yourself, and when you do, then circumstances and people will both seem and be changed."

"Scientific research is the art of asking the right question in the right way."

"Imagine what life would be like without imagination! There would be no Michelangelo or Da Vinci, no Edison, no delinquents and no saints, no Mozart, no nuclear power."

"Choose to see beauty. Watch a puppy's antics. Do not think of how he will look or behave when he is a grown dog. Look at him now, look at him fully, look at him so completely that there is no room in your mind for anything except this puppy, this moment. (16: "AS IF FOR THE FIRST TIME, or Five Minutes of Beauty a Day")"

"It is against our ethical principles as human beings to harm others. But aside from ethics, it is against our self-interest. The neurosis we cultivate in others inevitably rebounds against ourselves. From heavy-handed authority resentment and rebellion will develop. From sexual repression or dissatisfaction, anger, nervous tension and its consequences will arise."

"This is a part of living, part of the interrelatedness of human beings. We cannot live in a world of people and avoid the storms of their disagreeable and painful emotions any more than we can avoid the weather. But we can avoid this feeling of being the target for them. We can even turn the unpleasant encounters to our own good use."

"each of us has a choice. We can passively take our place in the negative chain, accepting the harm to ourselves and passing it on to others. Or we can break the chain and turn the energy of a destructive emotion into a constructive action. Energy is neutral. It is what we do with it that makes it destructive or creative, harmful or healing."

"I admire the beauty and concision of your language. You are so economical and careful not to waste a word! And most important: the precision with which you analyze the human soul, women’s souls, your own soul."

"Beauty, well, it's one of the greatest, greatest gifts. I feel sorry sometimes because people are so worried and so involved in something that they don't have even five minutes to look at something beautiful. I find beauty almost everywhere."

"When a book is amusing and charming and quite easy to understand we are apt to dismiss it as a lightweight. Don't make this mistake about Laura Huxley. She offers you nothing less than a new life."

"The town was in an uproar for some time after the news that Gitman, the Talmud teacher, was a freethinker. Imagine, if they hadn't realized it in time he might have converted the whole town. (first lines of "A Glass")"

"the silence stood like an iron wall, unyielding; it lay upon them like a heap of stones. ("The First Patient")"