Saul Bellow Quotes
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I pretended not to understand. One of life's hardest jobs, to make a quick understanding slow. I think I succeeded, thought Herzog.
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I don’t actually take much stock in the collapsing culture bit. I’m beginning to see it instead as the conduct of life without input from your soul.
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I am an American – Chicago born.
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It is a joy to be choked with thought.
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There is simply too much to think about.
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Fidelity is for phonographs
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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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For the first time in history, the human species as a whole has gone into politics. Everyone is in the act, and there is no telling what may come of it.
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It's goodbye to reality when love sets in.
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Death deserves dignity.
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It seems, after all that there are no nonpeculiar people.
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Anxiety destroys scale, and suffering makes us lose perspective.
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The best and purest human beings, from the beginning of time, have understood that life is sacred.
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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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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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Is our species crazy? Plenty of evidence.
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I'm glad I haven't lived in vain.
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Well, everybody has a history.
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You're all alone when you're a writer. Sometimes you just feel you need a humanity bath. Even a ride on the subway will do that. But it's much more interesting to talk about books. After all, that's what life used to be for writers: they talk books, politics, history, America. Nothing has replaced that.
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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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There are evils that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever... money, for instance, or war.
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The challenge of modern freedom, or the combination of isolation and freedom which confronts you, is to make yourself up. The danger is that you may emerge from the process as a not-entirely-human creature. (Referenced in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People by Toby Young)
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And what about all the good I have in my heart - does it mean anything?
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A fool can throw a stone in a pond that 100 wise men can not get out.