Canadian-American writer (1915-2005)
Conquered people tend to be witty.
SAUL BELLOW
Mr. Sammler's Planet
Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love.
SAUL BELLOW
Dangling Man
Human character is smaller now, people don't have durable passions; they've replaced passions with excitement.
SAUL BELLOW
The Guardian, Sep. 10, 1997
In every direction, the walls of life are tiled with such facts so that you can never account for them all, only note some of the more conspicuous ones.
SAUL BELLOW
Ravelstein
One reason why violence is so popular may be that psychiatric insights have worn us out and we get satisfaction from seeing them blown away with automatic weapons.
SAUL BELLOW
Ravelstein
An utterly steady, reliable woman, responsible to the point of grimness. Daisy was a statistician for the Gallup Poll.
SAUL BELLOW
Herzog
I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness that characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm.
SAUL BELLOW
The Paris Review, winter 1966
Human beings can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.
SAUL BELLOW
"Him with His Foot in His Mouth", Him with His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories
Being right was largely a matter of explanations.
SAUL BELLOW
Mr. Sammler's Planet
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
Fiction, in the magazines, is presently going to be in the same position as poetry, namely filler. A respectable kind of filler.
SAUL BELLOW
interview, Nov. 24, 1990
You become a writer because you are convinced that you have a grip on reality of a certain distinctive kind. It belongs to you and to others who share such a recognition.
SAUL BELLOW
AGNI interview, 1997
People reserve their best thinking for their professional specialties and, next in line, for serious matters confronting the alert citizen--economics, politics, the disposal of nuclear waste, etc. The day’s work done, they want to be entertained.
SAUL BELLOW
introduction, The Closing of the American Mind
It's no small matter to become rich and famous by saying exactly what you think -- to say it in your own words, without compromise.
SAUL BELLOW
Ravelstein
Greatness without models? Inconceivable. One could not be the thing itself -- Reality. One must be satisfied with symbols.
SAUL BELLOW
Mr. Sammler's Planet
There is simply too much to think about. It is hopeless -- too many kinds of special preparation are required. In electronics, in economics, in social analysis, in history, in psychology, in international politics, most of us are, given the oceanic proliferating complexity of things, paralyzed by the very suggestion that we assume responsibility for so much. This is what makes packaged opinion so attractive.
SAUL BELLOW
"There Is Simply Too Much to Think About,", It All Adds Up
You see kids, little boys, practicing the jeers of their television heroes--they shape themselves on such models. It’s a strange conformity to what’s thrust at them; they adopt it and adapt it and play with it.
SAUL BELLOW
AGNI interview, 1997
Boredom is the conviction that you can't change ... the shriek of unused capacities.
SAUL BELLOW
The Adventures of Augie March
Strict seriousness was far more dangerous than any joke.
SAUL BELLOW
Ravelstein
I didn't want to be ignored. I didn't want my books to be ignored. But I didn't really care to cut such a figure either because ... well, it interferes with the business of writing.
SAUL BELLOW
Q & A at Howard Community College, Feb. 1986