Saul Bellow Quotes - Page 4

The fact that there are so many weak, poor and boring stories and novels written and published in America has been ascribed by our rebels to the horrible squareness of our institutions, the idiocy of power, the debasement of sexual instincts, and the failure of writers to be alienated enough. The poems and novels of these same rebellious spirits, and their theoretical statements, are grimy and gritty and very boring too, besides being nonsensical, and it is evident by now that polymorphous sexuality and vehement declarations of alienation are not going to produce great works of art either.

The spirit knows that its growth is the real aim of existence.

You have to fight for your life. That's the chief condition on which you hold it.

Love is the most potent cosmetic.

She was what we used to call a suicide blonde - dyed by her own hand.

I'm glad I haven't lived in vain.

I don’t actually take much stock in the collapsing culture bit. I’m beginning to see it instead as the conduct of life without input from your soul.

The life of every citizen is becoming a business. This, it seems to me, is one of the worst interpretations of the meaning of human life history has ever seen. Man's life is not a business.

Some people, if they didn't make it hard for themselves, might fall asleep.

Conquered people tend to be witty.

How could I be anything but a dissenter? Who wants the opinion of a group?

I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.

A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life.

I am a true adorer of life, and if I can't reach as high as the face of it, I plant my kiss somewhere lower down. Those who understand will require no further explanation.

If I had a child of school age, I would send him to one of the Waldorf Schools.

It's no disgrace to be a private, you know. Socrates was a plain foot soldier, a hoplite.

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.'

Nobody asks you to love the whole world, only to be honest, ehrlich. Don't have a loud mouth. The more you love people the more they'll mix you up. A child loves, a person respects. Respect is better than love.

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.

The physical body is an agent of the spirit and its mirror. It is an engine and a reflection of the spirit. It is the spirit's ingenious memorandum to itself and the spirit sees itself in my body, just as I see my own face in a looking glass. My nerves reflect this. The earth is literally a mirror of thoughts. Objects themselves are embodied thoughts. Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything.

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

The body, she says, is subject to the force of gravity. But the soul is ruled by levity, pure.

Also, he was smoking a cigar, and when a man is smoking a cigar, wearing a hat, he has an advantage; it is harder to find out how he feels.

It's usually the selfish people who are loved the most. They do what you deny yourself, and you love them for it. You give them your heart.

Let the enemies of life step down.