Saul Bellow Quotes
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Art -- the fresh feeling, new harmony, the transforming magic which by means of myth brings back the scattered distracted soul from its modern chaos -- art, not politics, is the remedy.
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An exchange occurs between man and woman. Love and thought complete each other in the human pair, and something like an exchange of souls takes place, according to the divine plan.
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The late philosopher Morris R. Cohen of CCNY was asked by a student in the metaphysics course, Professor Cohen, how do I know that I exist? The keen old prof replied, And who is asking?
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You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.
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I am deeply moved when I write. I get turned on by it. I've never used any drugs for stimulation. I don't use words loosely. When I'm working and the right word comes, there is an answering resonance within me. There is also a hardness of intention that goes with it. There is no idleness in it.
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My face too blind, my mind too limited, my instincts too narrow. But this intensity, doesn't it mean anything?
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Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love.
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I don't know exactly how it's done. I let it alone a good deal.
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Each man has his own batch of poems.
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I am moneys medium. It passes through me- taxes, insurance, mortgage, child support, rent, legal fees. All this dignified blundering costs plenty.
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I blame myself for not often enough seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. Somewhere in his journals, Dostoyevky remarks that a writer can begin anywhere, at the most commonplace thing, scratch around in it long enough, pry and dig away long enough, and lo!, soon he will hit upon the marvelous.
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I seem to have the blind self-acceptance of the eccentric who can't conceive that his eccentricities are not clearly understood.
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I’ve had all the monstrosity I want.
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Towards the end of your life you have something like a pain schedule to fill out - a long schedule like a federal document, only it's your pain schedule. Endless categories. First, physical causes - like arthritis, gallstones, menstrual cramps. New category, injured vanity, betrayal, swindle, injustice. But the hardest items of all have to do with love. The question then is: So why does everybody persist? If love cuts them up so much.
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Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining.
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Also, he was smoking a cigar, and when a man is smoking a cigar, wearing a hat, he has an advantage; it is harder to find out how he feels.
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The flesh would shrink and go, the blood would dry, but no one believes in his mind of minds or heart of hearts that the pictures do stop.
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I mean you have been disappointed in love, but don't you know how many things there are to be disappointed in besides love? You are lucky to be still disappointed in love. Later it may be even more terrible.
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The fact that there are so many weak, poor and boring stories and novels written and published in America has been ascribed by our rebels to the horrible squareness of our institutions, the idiocy of power, the debasement of sexual instincts, and the failure of writers to be alienated enough. The poems and novels of these same rebellious spirits, and their theoretical statements, are grimy and gritty and very boring too, besides being nonsensical, and it is evident by now that polymorphous sexuality and vehement declarations of alienation are not going to produce great works of art either.
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For God's sake,' the dog is saying, 'open the universe a little more!
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All human accomplishment has this same origin, identically. Imagination is a force of nature. Is this not enough to make a person full of ecstasy? Imagination, imagination, imagination! It converts to actual. It sustains, it alters, it redeems!
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Facts always are sensational.
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There is an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for.
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I have, perhaps, a slave-like constitution which is too easily restrained by bonds; it then becomes rebellious and bursts out in a comic revolution.