Saul Bellow Quotes - Page 3

Live or die but don't poison everything.

Death is the dark backing a mirror needs if we are to see anything

It is a joy to be choked with thought.

All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he's a writer. It's an aphrodisiac.

We are always looking for the book it is necessary to read next.

Those who have a why to live for can bear almost any how. The necessary premise is that a person is somehow more than his or her "characteristics," all the emotions, strivings, tastes, and constructions which it pleases us to call "My Life." We have grounds to hope that a Life is something more than a cloud of particles, mere facticity. Go through what is comprehensible and you conclude that only the incomprehensible gives any light.

I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos.

I am moneys medium. It passes through me- taxes, insurance, mortgage, child support, rent, legal fees. All this dignified blundering costs plenty.

I am more stupid about some things than others; not equally stupid in all directions; I am not a well-rounded person.

One thought-murder a day keeps the psychiatrist away.

I love solitude, but I prize it most when plenty of company is available.

Boredom is an instrument of social control. Power is the power to impose boredom, to command stasis, to combine this stasis with anguish. The real tedium, deep tedium, is seasoned with terror and with death.

The stillness in art characterizes prayer, and the eye of the storm.

Alternatives, and particularly desirable alternatives, grow only on imaginary trees.

I am a phoenix who runs after arsonists.

In Los Angeles all the loose objects in the country were collected, as if America had been tilted and everything that wasn't tightly screwed down had slid into Southern California.

When I didn't argue he was satisfied he had persuaded me, and was not the first to make that mistake.

Boredom is the conviction that you can't change ... the shriek of unused capacities.

Retirement is an illusion. Not a reward but a mantrap. The bankrupt underside of success. A shortcut to death. Golf courses are too much like cemeteries.

Strict seriousness was far more dangerous than any joke.

In the greatest confusion there is still an open channel to the soul. It may be difficult to find because by midlife it is overgrown, and some of the wildest thickets that surround it grow out of what we describe as our education. But the channel is always there, and it is our business to keep it open, to have access to the deepest part of ourselves.

Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love.

He believed that he must, that he could and would recover the good things, the happy things, the easy tranquil things of life. He had made mistakes, but he could overlook these. He had been a fool, but that could be forgiven. The time wasted--must be relinquished. What else could one do about it? Things were too complex, but they might be reduced to simplicity again. Recovery was possible.

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.

The first undressing of two lovers is a most special event.