Saul Bellow > Quotes

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

“People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.”
― Saul Bellow

“Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.”
― Saul Bellow, Herzog

“A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”
― Saul Bellow, To Jerusalem and Back

“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

“One thought-murder a day keeps the psychiatrist away.”
― Saul Bellow, Herzog

“Live or die, but don't poison everything.”
― Saul Bellow, Herzog

“Boredom is the conviction that you can't change ... the shriek of unused capacities.”
― Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March

“A man is only as good as what he loves.”
― saul bellow

“Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.”
― Saul Bellow

“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, Henderson the Rain King

“You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“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

“A writer is a reader moved to emulation.”
― Saul Bellow

“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

“A man should be able to hear, and to bear, the worst that could be said of him.”
― Saul Bellow

“Readiness to answer all questions is the infallible sign of stupidity.”
― Saul Bellow, Herzog

“I want to tell you, don't marry suffering. Some people do. They get married to it, and sleep and eat together, just as husband and wife. If they go with joy they think it's adultery.”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“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, Herzog

“I am a phoenix who runs after arsonists.”
― Saul Bellow

“Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty; but learn to be happy alone.”
― Saul Bellow, Ravelstein

“People don't realize how much they are in the grip of ideas. We live among ideas much more than we live in nature.”
― Saul Bellow, Conversations with Saul Bellow

“I love solitude but I prize it most when company is available.”
― Saul Bellow

“I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed. And then? I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed. And what next? I get laid, I take a short holiday, but very soon after I fall upon those same thorns with gratification in pain, or suffering in joy - who knows what the mixture is! What good, what lasting good is there in me? Is there nothing else between birth and death but what I can get out of this perversity - only a favorable balance of disorderly emotions? No freedom? Only impulses? And what about all the good I have in my heart - does it mean anything? Is it simply a joke? A false hope that makes a man feel the illusion of worth? And so he goes on with his struggles. But this good is no phony. I know it isn't. I swear it.”
― Saul Bellow, Herzog

“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

“If I'm out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.”
― Saul Bellow, Herzog

“I am a true adorer of life, and if I can't reach as high as the face of it, I plant my kiss somewhere lower down. Those who understand will require no further explanation.”
― Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King

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

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

“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.”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day