Canadian-American writer (1915-2005)
Myself is thus and so, and will continue thus and so. And why fight it? My balance comes from instability.
SAUL BELLOW
Herzog
A man may say, "From now on I'm going to speak the truth." But the truth hears him and runs away and hides before he's even done speaking.
SAUL BELLOW
Herzog
Losing a parent is something like driving through a plate-glass window. You didn't know it was there until it shattered, and then for years to come you're picking up the pieces -- down to the last glassy splinter.
SAUL BELLOW
letter to Martin Amis, Mar. 13, 1996
Writers are greatly respected. The intelligent public is wonderfully patient with them, continues to read them, and endures disappointment after disappointment, waiting to hear from art what it does not hear from theology, philosophy, social theory, and what it cannot hear from pure science. Out of the struggle at the center has come an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for.
SAUL BELLOW
Nobel lecture, Dec. 12, 1976
A human soul devoid of longing was a soul deformed, deprived of its highest good, sick unto death.
SAUL BELLOW
Ravelstein
A writer should be able to express himself easily, naturally, copiously in a form that frees his mind, his energies. Why should he hobble himself with formalities?
SAUL BELLOW
The Paris Review, winter 1966
A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
SAUL BELLOW
To Jerusalem and Back
Anxiety destroys scale, and suffering makes us lose perspective.
SAUL BELLOW
"The Sealed Treasure,", It All Adds Up
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
In an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness.
SAUL BELLOW
Henderson the Rain King
Every book, every story, has a sort of invisible signature at the front. And when you've written the first few lines of a story, those govern all the rest that follows.
SAUL BELLOW
Q & A at Howard Community College, Feb. 1986
It is sometimes necessary to repeat what we all know. All mapmakers should place the Mississippi in the same location, and avoid originality.
SAUL BELLOW
Mr. Sammler's Planet
A man is only as good as what he loves.
SAUL BELLOW
Seize the Day
Some people, if they didn't make it hard for themselves, might fall asleep.
SAUL BELLOW
The Adventures of Augie March
There are evils, as someone has pointed out, that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever -- money, for instance, or war.
SAUL BELLOW
The Dean's December
Psychoanalysis pretends to investigate the Unconscious. The Unconscious by definition is what you are not conscious of. But the Analysts already know what's in it. They should, because they put it all in beforehand. It's like an Easter Egg hunt.
SAUL BELLOW
The Dean's December
With a novelist, like a surgeon, you have to get a feeling that you've fallen into good hands--someone from whom you can accept the anesthetic with confidence.
SAUL BELLOW
New York Times Book Review, July 6, 1980
I have always had a weakness for footnotes. For me a clever or a wicked footnote has redeemed many a text.
SAUL BELLOW
Ravelstein
When I finish something, I generally put it on the shelf, and I very seldom look at it unless somebody mentions it to me, and then I open the book, and I read it, and I say, "Did I do that?"
SAUL BELLOW
Q & A at Howard Community College, Feb. 1986
Imagination is a force of nature. Is this not enough to make a person full of ecstasy? Imagination, imagination, imagination. It converts to actual. It sustains, it alters, it redeems!
SAUL BELLOW
Henderson the Rain King