Saul Bellow Quotes
-
Myself is thus and so, and will continue thus and so. And why fight it? My balance comes from instability.
-
All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he's a writer. It's an aphrodisiac.
-
Fun comes hard - like, alas, its prarens, pleasure and happiness, whom we have to pursue.
-
The hour that burst the spirit's sleep.
-
Writers are greatly respected. The intelligent public is wonderfully patient with them, continues to read them, and endures disappointment after disappointment, waiting to hear from art what it does not hear from theology, philosophy, social theory, and what it cannot hear from pure science. Out of the struggle at the center has come 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.
-
You have, like the external world, your own phenomena inside.
-
Boredom is the conviction that you can't change ... the shriek of unused capacities.
-
Is love supposed to ruin you? It seems to me you shouldn't destroy yourself out of life for purposes of love--or what good is it?
-
There is much to be said for exotic marriages. If your husband is a bore, it takes years longer to discover.
-
But there are things you can't consult anybody about.
-
Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.
-
But she's a nut, and nuts win.
-
Our society, like decadent Rome, has turned into an amusement society, with writers chief among the court jesters
-
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.
-
Art is order, made out of the chaos of life.
-
The main reason for rewriting is not to achieve a smooth surface, but to discover the inner truth of your characters.
-
Human character is smaller now, people don't have durable passions; they've replaced passions with excitement.
-
There's a kind of emptiness at the center of life ... nothing to form your life on, or by.
-
A good novel is worth more then the best scientific study.
-
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?
-
Certain blood will be given for half certain reasons, as in all wars.
-
Brother raises a hand against brother and son against father (how terrible!) and the father also against son. And moreover it is a continuity-matter, for if the father did not strike the son, they would not be alike. It is done to perpetuate similarity. Oh, Henderson, man cannot keep still under the blows.... A hit B? B hit C?--we have not enough alphabet to cover the condition. A brave man will try to make the evil stop with him. He shall keep the blow. No man shall get it from him, and that is a sublime ambition.
-
Psychoanalysis pretends to investigate the Unconscious. The Unconscious by definition is what you are not conscious of. But the Analysts already know what's in it - they should, because they put it all in beforehand.
-
Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty; but learn to be happy alone.