Saul Bellow Quotes

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

It seems, after all that there are no nonpeculiar people.

How could I be anything but a dissenter? Who wants the opinion of a group?

...I am much better now at ambiguities.

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

Facts always are sensational.

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

In Los Angeles all the loose objects in the country were collected, as if America had been tilted and everything that wasn't tightly screwed down had slid into Southern California.

A plan relieves you of the torment of choice.

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

As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn't make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting - the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.

... a fellow can't predict what he will pick up in the form of influence.

Is our species crazy? Plenty of evidence.

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

Conquered people tend to be witty.

The best argument is an undeniably good book.

If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.

One way or another the no doubt mad idea entered my mind that my own actions had historic importance and this fantasy (?) made it appear that people who harmed me were interfering with an important experiment.

Art is order, made out of the chaos of life.

The spirit knows that its growth is the real aim of existence.

Humankind struggles with collective powers for its freedom, the individual struggles with dehumanization for the possession of his soul.

The soul has to find and hold its ground against hostile forces, sometimes embodied in ideas which frequently deny its very existence, and which indeed often seem to be trying to annul it altogether.

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.

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

Only self-hatred could lead him to ruin himself because his heart was "broken.

Each man has his own batch of poems.

The physical body is an agent of the spirit and its mirror. It is an engine and a reflection of the spirit. It is the spirit's ingenious memorandum to itself and the spirit sees itself in my body, just as I see my own face in a looking glass. My nerves reflect this. The earth is literally a mirror of thoughts. Objects themselves are embodied thoughts. Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything.

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?

The dream of man's heart ... is that life may complete in significant pattern.

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.

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

I've never turned over a fig leaf yet that didn't have a price tag on the other side.

Guys like you make life easy for some women.

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

Let the enemies of life step down.

I have begun in old age to understand...that we seldom if ever realize how generous we are to ourselves, and just how stingy with others.

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

Boredom is the conviction that you can't change ... the shriek of unused capacities.

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

For God's sake,' the dog is saying, 'open the universe a little more!

I must play the instrument I've got.

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. Only the present is real--the here-and-now. Seize the day.

The flesh would shrink and go, the blood would dry, but no one believes in his mind of minds or heart of hearts that the pictures do stop.

... unless you made your life a turning point, there was no reason for existing.

Love is the most potent cosmetic.

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.

The writer cannot make the seas of distraction stand still, but he [or she] can at times come between the madly distracted and the distractions.

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