Saul Bellow famous quotes

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
-- Saul Bellow

#Inspirational #Freedom #Fear

Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
-- Saul Bellow

#Memories #Doors #Needs

A man is only as good as what he loves.
-- Saul Bellow

#Love #Inspirational #Funny Valentines Day

Whoever wants to reach a distant goal must take small steps.
-- Saul Bellow

#Motivational #Goal #Want

All human accomplishment has this same origin, identically. Imagination is a force of nature. Is this not enough to make a person full of ecstasy? Imagination, imagination, imagination! It converts to actual. It sustains, it alters, it redeems!
-- Saul Bellow

#Imagination #Accomplishment #Enough

You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.
-- Saul Bellow

#Inspirational #Change #Inspiring

In the greatest confusion there is still an open channel to the soul. It may be difficult to find because by midlife it is overgrown, and some of the wildest thickets that surround it grow out of what we describe as our education. But the channel is always there, and it is our business to keep it open, to have access to the deepest part of ourselves.
-- Saul Bellow

#Business #Confusion #Soul

People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.
-- Saul Bellow

#Book #Reading #People

Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.
-- Saul Bellow

#Life #Beauty #Unexpected

When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
-- Saul Bellow

#Advice #Accomplices

Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love.
-- Saul Bellow

#Kindness #Men #Vacuums

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.
-- Saul Bellow

#Mistake #Recovery #Simplicity

Death is the dark backing a mirror needs if we are to see anything
-- Saul Bellow

#Dark #Mirrors #Ministry

We mustn't forget how quickly the visions of genius become the canned goods of intellectuals.
-- Saul Bellow

#Vision #Genius #Forget

There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book.
-- Saul Bellow

#Book #Sunset #Writing

Some people, if they didn't make it hard for themselves, might fall asleep.
-- Saul Bellow

#Fall #People #Might

The main reason for rewriting is not to achieve a smooth surface, but to discover the inner truth of your characters.
-- Saul Bellow

#Character #Rewriting #Reason

If I had a child of school age, I would send him to one of the Waldorf Schools.
-- Saul Bellow

#Children #School #Age

Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty; but learn to be happy alone.
-- Saul Bellow

#Happiness #Book #People

We are always looking for the book it is necessary to read next.
-- Saul Bellow

#Book #Next

She was what we used to call a suicide blonde - dyed by her own hand.
-- Saul Bellow

#Funny #Girl #Sarcastic

A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life.
-- Saul Bellow

#Impression #Novel #Multitudes

Myself is thus and so, and will continue thus and so. And why fight it? My balance comes from instability.
-- Saul Bellow

#Fighting #Balance #Instability

With one long breath, caught and held in his chest, he fought his sadness over his solitary life. Don't cry, you idiot! Live or die, but don't poison everything...
-- Saul Bellow

#Sadness #Long #Poison

A fool can throw a stone in a pond that 100 wise men can not get out.
-- Saul Bellow

#Wise #Men #Fool

You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.
-- Saul Bellow

#Inspirational #Mistake #Half

I blame myself for not often enough seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. Somewhere in his journals, Dostoyevky remarks that a writer can begin anywhere, at the most commonplace thing, scratch around in it long enough, pry and dig away long enough, and lo!, soon he will hit upon the marvelous.
-- Saul Bellow

#Writing #Long #Ordinary

The stillness in art characterizes prayer, and the eye of the storm.
-- Saul Bellow

#Art #Prayer #Eye

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
-- Saul Bellow

#Crazy #Mad #Age

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.'
-- Saul Bellow

#Love #Heart #Rejection

I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.
-- Saul Bellow

#Art #Prayer #Eye

What do women really want? They eat green salad and drink human blood.
-- Saul Bellow

#Blood #Green #Want

We are all such accidents. We do not make up history and culture. We simply appear, not by our own choice. We make what we can of our condition with the means available. We must accept the mixture as we find it - the impurity of it, the tragedy of it, the hope of it.
-- Saul Bellow

#Mean #Choices #Tragedy

There is 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.
-- Saul Bellow

#Who We Are #Life Is #Longing

One thought-murder a day keeps the psychiatrist away.
-- Saul Bellow

#Existentialism #Murder #Psychiatrist

Strict seriousness was far more dangerous than any joke.
-- Saul Bellow

#Dangerous #Strict #Seriousness

It's usually the selfish people who are loved the most. They do what you deny yourself, and you love them for it. You give them your heart.
-- Saul Bellow

#Selfish #Heart #People

Art has to do with the arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.
-- Saul Bellow

#Art #Attention #Distraction

I am a phoenix who runs after arsonists.
-- Saul Bellow

#Running #Phoenix #Arsonists

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.
-- Saul Bellow

#Art #Disappointment #Philosophy

Open discussion of many major public questions has for some time now been taboo. We can't open our mouths without being denounced as racists, misogynists, supremacists, imperialists or fascists. As for the media, they stand ready to trash anyone so designated.
-- Saul Bellow

#Media #Political #Racist

We are funny creatures. We don't see the stars as they are, so why do we love them? They are not small gold objects, but endless fire.
-- Saul Bellow

#Inspirational #Stars #Fire

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.
-- Saul Bellow

#Strong #Sleep #Ideas

Language is a spiritual mansion in which you live and nobody has the right to evict you.
-- Saul Bellow

#Spiritual #Language

Boredom is an instrument of social control. Power is the power to impose boredom, to command stasis, to combine this stasis with anguish. The real tedium, deep tedium, is seasoned with terror and with death.
-- Saul Bellow

#Real #Boredom #Social

The hour that burst the spirit's sleep...
-- Saul Bellow

#Sleep #Spirit #Hours

All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he's a writer. It's an aphrodisiac.
-- Saul Bellow

#Marriage #Aphrodisiac

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?
-- Saul Bellow

#Art #Real #Men