Saul Bellow Quotes

How should I know why! I didn't invent human beings, Iggy.

Each man has his own batch of poems.

I pretended not to understand. One of life's hardest jobs, to make a quick understanding slow. I think I succeeded, thought Herzog.

Well, everybody has a history.

The terms which, in his inmost heart, each man knows. As I know mine. As all know. For that is the truth of it — that we all know, God, that we know, that we know, we know, we know.

Facts always are sensational.

Art attempts to find in the universe, in matter as well as in the facts of life, what is fundamental, enduring, essential.

And what about all the good I have in my heart - does it mean anything?

I don't know exactly how it's done. I let it alone a good deal.

One must bear in mind the odd angle or slant that the rays of love have to take in order to reach a heart like mine.

You have, like the external world, your own phenomena inside.

I have, perhaps, a slave-like constitution which is too easily restrained by bonds; it then becomes rebellious and bursts out in a comic revolution.

It is sometimes necessary to repeat what all know. All mapmakers should place the Mississippi in the same location and avoid originality.

Death is the black backing on the mirror that allows us to see anything at all.

Guys like you make life easy for some women.

There's a kind of emptiness at the center of life ... nothing to form your life on, or by.

A writer is a reader moved to emulation.

All human accomplishment has the same origin, identically. Imagination is a force of nature. Is this not enough to make a person full of ecstasy? Imagination, imagination, imagination.

I am an American – Chicago born.

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

I seem to have the blind self-acceptance of the eccentric who can't conceive that his eccentricities are not clearly understood.

From Euclid to Newton there were straight lines. The modern age analyzes the wavers.

I’ve had all the monstrosity I want.

And I'm convinced that knowing the names of things braces people up.

Certain blood will be given for half certain reasons, as in all wars.

But there are things you can't consult anybody about.

...I am much better now at ambiguities.

The old continued to have one resurgence of foolishness after another, until the organism gave out altogether.

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...

There is no limit to the amount of intelligence invested in ignorance when the need for illusion runs deep.

. . . Nietzche himself had a Christian view of history, seeing the present moment always as some crisis, some fall from classical greatness, some corruption or evil to be saved from.

He didn't ask "Where will you spend eternity?" as religious the-end-is-near picketers did but rather, "With what, in this modern democracy, will you meet the demands of your soul?

Just because your soul is being torn to pieces doesn't mean that you stop analyzing the phenomena.

The human being now simply can't close his elected garment about himself. Obligations to one's fellows perhaps prevent full buttoning by artists.

You have to have the power to employ pain, to repent, to be illuminated, you must have the opportunity and even the time.

I discovered, however, in the early days of our marriage that, in having her way, she put my interests ahead of her own.

Society is what beats me. Alone I can be pretty good, but let me go among people and there’s the devil to pay.

At times I feel like a socket that remembers its tooth.

I am not an ornithologist—I am a bird.

Even if I am not the honestest type in the world I don't want to lie more than is average.

Strict and literal truthfulness was a trivial game and might even be a disagreeable neurotic affliction.

What did Danton lose his head for, or why was there a Napoleon, if it wasn't to make a nobility of us all?

Maybe America didn't need art and inner miracles. It had so many outer ones. The USA was a big operation, very big. The more it, the less we.

I am a prisoner of perception, a compulsory witness.

The noise of the world is so terrible that we can endure it only by being coated with sleep.

Your authority and my degeneracy are one in the same.

The Indian temperament is so excitable, you know.

No school without spectacular eccentrics and crazy hearts is worth attending.

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

Emancipation resulting in madness. Unlimited freedom to choose and play a tremendous variety of roles with a lot of coarse energy.