Riana > Riana's Quotes

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

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

“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

“When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice”
― Andre Gide

“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

“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

“You have to fight for your life. That's the chief condition on which you hold it. ”
― Saul Bellow, Herzog

“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

“The challenge of modern freedom, or the combination of isolation and freedom which confronts you, is to make yourself up. The danger is that you may emerge from the process as a not-entirely-human creature.
(Referenced in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People by Toby Young)”
― Saul Bellow, Ravelstein

“Every other man spoke a language entirely his own, which he had figured out by private thinking; he had his own ideas and peculiar ways. If you wanted to talk about a glass of water, you had to start back with God creating the heavens and earth; the apple; Abraham; Moses and Jesus; Rome; the Middle Ages; gunpowder; the Revolution; back to Newton; up to Einstein; then war and Lenin and Hitler. After reviewing this and getting it all straight again you could proceed to talk about a glass of water. "I'm fainting, please get me a little water." You were lucky even then to make yourself understood. And this happened over and over and over with everyone you met. You had to translate and translate, explain and explain, back and forth, and it was the punishment of hell itself not to understand or be understood.”
― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

“And I said to myself that unless you conceive Death to be a violent guerrilla and kidnaper who snatches those you love, and if you are not cowardly and cannot submit to such terrorism as civilized people now do in every department of life, you must pursue and inquire and explore every possibility and seek everywhere and try everything.”
― Saul Bellow, Humboldt's Gift

“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

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

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