Saul Bellow Quotes
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But there are things you can't consult anybody about.
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She's very pretty but she's honey from the icebox, if you know what I mean. Cold sweets won't spread.
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Fun comes hard - like, alas, its prarens, pleasure and happiness, whom we have to pursue.
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I think that New York is not the cultural centre of America, but the business and administrative centre of American culture.
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But she's a nut, and nuts win.
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You have, like the external world, your own phenomena inside.
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I see that I've become a really bad correspondent. It's not that I don't think of you. You come into my thoughts often. But when you do it appears to me that I owe you a particularly grand letter. And so you end in the "warehouse of good intentions": "Can't do it now." "Then put it on hold." This is one's strategy for coping with old age, and with death--because one can't die with so many obligations in storage. Our clever species, so fertile and resourceful in denying its weaknesses.
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The hour that burst the spirit's sleep.
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Our society, like decadent Rome, has turned into an amusement society, with writers chief among the court jesters
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There is much to be said for exotic marriages. If your husband is a bore, it takes years longer to discover.
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Art is order, made out of the chaos of life.
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Human character is smaller now, people don't have durable passions; they've replaced passions with excitement.
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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.
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I don't know exactly how it's done. I let it alone a good deal.
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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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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.
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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.
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There's a kind of emptiness at the center of life ... nothing to form your life on, or by.
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In every community there is a class of people profoundly dangerous to the rest. I don't mean the criminals. For them we have punitive sanctions. I mean the leaders. Invariably the most dangerous people seek the power. While in the parlors of indignation the right-thinking citizen brings his heart to a boil. (p. 51)
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Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty; but learn to be happy alone.
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In the history of the world many souls have been, are, and will be, and with a little reflection this is marvelous and not depressing. Many jerks are made gloomy about it, for they think quantity buries them alive. That's just crazy. Numbers are very dangerous, but the main thing about them is that they humble your pride. And that's good.
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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.
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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?
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Bringing people into the here-and-now. The real universe. That's the present moment. The past is no good to us. The future is full of anxiety. Only the present is real--the here-and-now. Seize the day.