Saul Bellow Quotes
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Everyone tries to create a world he can live in, and what he can't use he often can't see. But the real world is already created, and if your fabrication doesn't correspond, then even if you feel noble and insist on there being something better than what people call reality, that better something needn't try to exceed what, in its actuality, since we know it so little, may be very surprising. If a happy state of things, surprising; if miserable or tragic, no worse than what we invent.
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It is wrong to turn a man (a subject) into a thing (an object). By means of spiritual dialogue, the I-It relationship becomes an I-Thou relationship. God comes and goes in man's soul. And men come and go in each other's souls. Sometimes they come and go in each other's beds, too.
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But privately when things got very bad I often looked into books to see whether I could find some helpful words, and one day I read, "The forgiveness of sins is perpetual and righteousness first is not required." This impressed me so deeply that I went around saying it to myself. But then I forgot which book it was.
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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.
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I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos.
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Let the enemies of life step down.
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The challenge of modern freedom, or the combination of isolation and freedom which confronts you, is to make yourself up. The danger is that you may emerge from the process as a not-entirely-human creature. (Referenced in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People by Toby Young)
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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.
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Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
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How should I know why! I didn't invent human beings, Iggy.
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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.
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California is like an artificial limb the rest of the country doesn't really need. You can quote me on that.
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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.
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For God's sake,' the dog is saying, 'open the universe a little more!
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The body, she says, is subject to the force of gravity. But the soul is ruled by levity, pure.
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O Lord! he concluded, forgive all these trespasses. Lead me not into Penn Station.
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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.
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I've never turned over a fig leaf yet that didn't have a price tag on the other side.
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In expressing love we belong among the undeveloped countries.
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I labor, I spend, I strive, I design, I love, I cling, I uphold, I give way, I envy, I long, I scorn, I die, I hide, I want. Faster, much faster than any man could make the tally.
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How could I be anything but a dissenter? Who wants the opinion of a group?
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Boredom is the conviction that you can't change ... the shriek of unused capacities.
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The first undressing of two lovers is a most special event.
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And I'm convinced that knowing the names of things braces people up.
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We mustn't forget how quickly the visions of genius become the canned goods of intellectuals.
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... an era of turmoil and ideological confusion, the principal phenomenon of the present age.
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It's hard for writers to get on with their work if they are convinced that they owe a concrete debt to experience and cannot allow themselves the privilege of ranging freely through social classes and professional specialties. A certain pride in their own experience, perhaps a sense of the property rights of others in their experience, holds them back.
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Death is the dark backing a mirror needs if we are to see anything
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... a fellow can't predict what he will pick up in the form of influence.
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I mean you have been disappointed in love, but don't you know how many things there are to be disappointed in besides love? You are lucky to be still disappointed in love. Later it may be even more terrible.
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