Saul Bellow Quotes
-
It seems hard for the American people to believe that anything could be more exciting than the times themselves. What we read daily and view on the TV has thrust imagined forms into the shadow. We are staggeringly rich in facts, in things, and perhaps, like the nouveau riche of other ages, we want our wealth faithfully reproduced by the artist.
-
Hapiness can only be found if you can free yourself of all other distractions.
-
Art is order, made out of the chaos of life.
-
There was a disturbance in my heart, a voice that spoke there and said, I want, I want, I want! It happened every afternoon, and when I tried to suppress it it got even stronger.
-
...there is no old age of the soul.
-
Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.
-
I think that New York is not the cultural centre of America, but the business and administrative centre of American culture.
-
A millennial belief in a Holy God may have the effect of deepening the soul, but it is also obviously archaic, and modern influences would presently bring me up to date and reveal how antiquated my origins were. To turn away from those origins, however, has always seemed to me an utter impossibility. It would be a treason to my first consciousness to un-Jew myself.
-
But she's a nut, and nuts win.
-
In politics continental Europe was infantile - horrifying. What America lacked, for all its political stability, was the capacity to enjoy intellectual pleasures as though they were sensual pleasures. This is what Europe offered, or was said to offer.
-
I've discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, 'To hell with you.'
-
Myself is thus and so, and will continue thus and so. And why fight it? My balance comes from instability.
-
In here, the human bosom -- mine, yours, everybody's -- there isn't just one soul. There's a lot of souls. But there are two main ones, the real soul and a pretender soul. Now! Every man realizes that he has to love something or somebody. He feels that he must go outward. 'If thou canst not love, what art thou?' Are you with me?
-
A good novel is worth more then the best scientific study.
-
When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
-
Alternatives, and particularly desirable alternatives, grow only on imaginary trees.
-
Our society, like decadent Rome, has turned into an amusement society, with writers chief among the court jesters
-
He believed that he must, that he could and would recover the good things, the happy things, the easy tranquil things of life. He had made mistakes, but he could overlook these. He had been a fool, but that could be forgiven. The time wasted--must be relinquished. What else could one do about it? Things were too complex, but they might be reduced to simplicity again. Recovery was possible.
-
Excuse me ... but I reject your definitions of me.
-
She's very pretty but she's honey from the icebox, if you know what I mean. Cold sweets won't spread.
-
All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he's a writer. It's an aphrodisiac.
-
I labor, I spend, I strive, I design, I love, I cling, I uphold, I give way, I envy, I long, I scorn, I die, I hide, I want. Faster, much faster than any man could make the tally.
-
There's a kind of emptiness at the center of life ... nothing to form your life on, or by.
-
The hour that burst the spirit's sleep.