All Saul Bellow Quotes
- 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… Cold
- A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life. It… Balanced
- There is much to be said for exotic marriages. If your husband is a bore, it takes years longer to discover. Bore
- The secret motive of the absent-minded is to be innocent while guilty. Absent-mindedness is spurious innocence. Absent
- Erotic practices have become diversified. Sex used to be a single-crop farming, like cotton or wheat; now people raise all kinds of things. All
- The modern reader (or viewer, or listener: let's include everybody) is perilously overloaded. His attention is, to use the latest lingo,'targeted' by powerful forces? Our… All
- 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… Act
- It seems hard for the American people to believe that anything could be more exciting than the times themselves. What we read daily and view… Age
- It's hard for writers to get on with their work if they are convinced that they owe a concrete debt to experience and cannot allow… Allow
- Americans must be the most sententious people in history. Far too busy to be religious, they have always felt that they sorely needed guidance. Always Felt
- In an age of enormities, the emotions are naturally weakened. We are continually called upon to have feelings - about genocide, for instance, or about… Age
- In politics continental Europe was infantile - horrifying. What America lacked, for all its political stability, was the capacity to enjoy intellectual pleasures as though… All
- A millennial belief in a Holy God may have the effect of deepening the soul, but it is also obviously archaic, and modern influences would… Always Seemed
- 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?… Accomplishment
- 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… Deny
- If I'm out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog. All
- A writer is a reader moved to emulation. Emulation
- 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… Actually Take
- I am a phoenix who runs after arsonists. Arsonists
- Guys like you make life easy for some women. Easy
- How should I know why! I didn't invent human beings, Iggy. Beings
- Do we always, always to the point of misery, do a thing? Always Always
- 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.… Anxiety
- I am an American, Chicago born – Chicago, that somber city – and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make… Acoustical
- Myself is thus and so, and will continue thus and so. And why fight it? My balance comes from instability. Balance