A man must have some contact with humanity, whether he wants it or not. I would say that the best contact with humanity is through love and sex. Here, you learn many things about life, because in sex and in love human character is revealed more than anywhere else. Let’s say that a man in society can play a very strong man, a dictator, but in sex he may become reduced to a child, or to an imp. The sexual organs are the most sensitive organs of the human being. For example, the eye will not stop seeing if it doesn’t like what it sees, but the penis will stop functioning if it doesn’t like what it “sees.” I would say that the sexual organs express the human soul more than any other part of the body. They are not diplomats. They tell the truth ruthlessly.

From Isaac Bashevis Singer and Richard Burgin’s Conversations with Isaac Bashevis Singer, Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1985, p. 33.

Addendum (March 27, 1994)

Indeed, the last few weeks I have been using my penis as my only guide through my jumbled recollections and toward the truth. When it went up, I felt I was on the right road; when it went down, I knew I was straying. Like a ruthless “seeing-eye” dog, my penis took me where there was much more for me to learn than I bargained for at the outset of our journey.