Saul Bellow Quotes
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A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life.
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Great pressure is brought to bear to make us undervalue ourselves. On the other hand, civilization teaches that each of us is an inestimable prize. There are, then, these two preparations: one for life and the other for death. Therefore we value and are ashamed to value ourselves.
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All human accomplishment has the same origin, identically. Imagination is a force of nature. Is this not enough to make a person full of ecstasy? Imagination, imagination, imagination.
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With a novelist, like a surgeon, you have to get a feeling that you've fallen into good hands - someone from whom you can accept the anesthetic with confidence.
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But privately when things got very bad I often looked into books to see whether I could find some helpful words, and one day I read, "The forgiveness of sins is perpetual and righteousness first is not required." This impressed me so deeply that I went around saying it to myself. But then I forgot which book it was.
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And what about all the good I have in my heart - does it mean anything?
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De Tocqueville considered the impulse toward well-being as one of the strongest impulses of a democratic society. He can't be blamed for underestimating the destructive powers generated by this same impulse.
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In an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness. But the pursuit of sanity can be a form of madness, too
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The body, she says, is subject to the force of gravity. But the soul is ruled by levity, pure.
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People don't realize how much they are in the grip of ideas. We live among ideas much more than we live in nature.
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Death is the black backing on the mirror that allows us to see anything at all.
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I don't like to write from a flat, cold position. You must like what you're doing very much or like the people -- either like them or hate them. You can't be indifferent.
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I'm afraid there's nothing we can do about the journalists; we can only hope that they will die off as the deerflies do towards the end of August.
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I am something of a crank about sleep, for if I get seven and a quarter hours instead of eight I feel afflicted and drag myself around, although there's nothing really wrong with me. It's just another idea. That's how it is with my ideas; they seem to get strong while I weaken.
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I am a phoenix who runs after arsonists.
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A man must have limits and cannot give in to the wild desires to be everything and everyone and everything to everyone.
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The only real distinction at this dangerous moment in human history and cosmic development has nothing to do with medals and ribbons. Not to fall asleep is distinguished. Everything else is mere popcorn.
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And I said to myself that unless you conceive Death to be a violent guerrilla and kidnaper who snatches those you love, and if you are not cowardly and cannot submit to such terrorism as civilized people now do in every department of life, you must pursue and inquire and explore every possibility and seek everywhere and try everything.
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If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.
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Everyone tries to create a world he can live in, and what he can't use he often can't see. But the real world is already created, and if your fabrication doesn't correspond, then even if you feel noble and insist on there being something better than what people call reality, that better something needn't try to exceed what, in its actuality, since we know it so little, may be very surprising. If a happy state of things, surprising; if miserable or tragic, no worse than what we invent.
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You have to fight for your life. That's the chief condition on which you hold it.
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Unless you're completely exploded, there's always something to be grateful for.
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...chaos doesn't run the whole show.
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A man should be able to hear, and to bear, the worst that could be said of him.