Saul Bellow

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

— Saul Bellow

“Everybody pays the heart lip service, of course, but everybody is more familiar with the absence of love than with its presence…

— Saul Bellow

“But Mimi- her tenderness didn't have an easy visibility. You wondered what it would be, and after what terrible manifestations it would…

— Saul Bellow

“I labor, I spend, I strive, I design, I love, I cling, I uphold, I give way, I envy, I long, I…

— Saul Bellow

Great pressure is brought to bear to make us undervalue ourselves. On the other hand, civilization teaches that each of us is…

— Saul Bellow

“I know how long—endless—people’s stories are when they have grievances. And how tedious for everyone.”

— Saul Bellow

Alternatives, and particularly desirable alternatives, grow only on imaginary trees.

— Saul Bellow

There is simply too much to think about.

— Saul Bellow

“Herzog abandoned this theme with characteristic abruptness”

— Saul Bellow

“Did I say that the world had never had better color? I left something out of account, a limping, crippled consideration which…

— Saul Bellow

“In this view the body itself, with its two arms and vertical length, was compared to the Cross, on which you knew…

— Saul Bellow

“Go through what is comprehensible and you conclude that only the incomprehensible gives any light.”

— Saul Bellow

“And I saw Clara Spohr coming from the Oyster Bar or being washed forth into this sea, dismasted, clinging to her soul…

— Saul Bellow

“I want! I want! I want!”

— Saul Bellow

"What do women want?" "They eat green salad and drink human blood."

— Saul Bellow

Open discussion of many major public questions has for some time now been taboo. We can't open our mouths without being denounced…

— Saul Bellow

“A professor from UBC observed that he agreed with Alexander Pope about the ultimate unreality of evil. Seen from the highest point…

— Saul Bellow

“Americans find it hard to believe that foreigners are unalterably foreign, for they have seen generations of immigrants who became Americans. But…

— Saul Bellow

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

— Saul Bellow

I don’t actually take much stock in the collapsing culture bit. I’m beginning to see it instead as the conduct of life…

— Saul Bellow

I labor, I spend, I strive, I design, I love, I cling, I uphold, I give way, I envy, I long, I…

— Saul Bellow

“It's no small matter to become rich and famous by saying exactly what you think — to say it in your own…

— Saul Bellow

“This development is possibly related to the fact that so much of "value" has been absorbed by technology itself. It is "good"…

— Saul Bellow

“Compulsory veneration is bound to come out as rebellion, hatred, and blasphemy.”

— Saul Bellow

“The revolutions of the twentieth century, the liberation of the masses by production, created private life but gave nothing to fill it…

— Saul Bellow