Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow

Novelist

Saul Bellow was a Nobel Prize-winning author known for his exploration of identity and human experience in works like 'Herzog' and 'The Adventures of Augie March'.

People Men Art Heart Soul Writing
Born
June 10, 1915
Died
April 5, 2005
Quotes
231
Rank
#186

Quote collection

Saul Bellow quotes (page 3 of 12)

231 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.

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"...America didn't have to fight scarcity and we all felt guilty before people who still had to struggle for bread and freedom in the old way ... We weren't starving, we weren't bugged by the police, locked up in madhouses for our ideas, arrested, deported, slave laborers sent to die in concentration camps. We were spared the holocausts and nights of terror. With our advantages we should be formulating the new basic questions for mankind. But instead we sleep. Just sleep and sleep, and eat and play and fuss and sleep again."

Struggle Sleep Fighting
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"The first undressing of two lovers is a most special event."

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

Fall People Might
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"The late philosopher Morris R. Cohen of CCNY was asked by a student in the metaphysics course, Professor Cohen, how do I know that I exist? The keen old prof replied, And who is asking?"

Asking Philosopher Students
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"Brother raises a hand against brother and son against father (how terrible!) and the father also against son. And moreover it is a continuity-matter, for if the father did not strike the son, they would not be alike. It is done to perpetuate similarity. Oh, Henderson, man cannot keep still under the blows.... A hit B? B hit C?--we have not enough alphabet to cover the condition. A brave man will try to make the evil stop with him. He shall keep the blow. No man shall get it from him, and that is a sublime ambition."

Brother Father Ambition
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"Our society, like decadent Rome, has turned into an amusement society, with writers chief among the court jesters"

Rome Amusement Our Society
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"I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction."

Art Attention Distraction
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"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."

Real Boredom Social
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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."

Inspirational Stars Fire
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"I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction."

Art Prayer Eye
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"People don't realize how much they are in the grip of ideas. We live among ideas much more than we live in nature."

Ideas People Insightful
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"A man should be able to hear, and to bear, the worst that could be said of him."

Real Men Able Bears
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"The main reason for rewriting is not to achieve a smooth surface, but to discover the inner truth of your characters."

Character Rewriting Reason
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"I blame myself for not often enough seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. Somewhere in his journals, Dostoyevky remarks that a writer can begin anywhere, at the most commonplace thing, scratch around in it long enough, pry and dig away long enough, and lo!, soon he will hit upon the marvelous."

Writing Long Ordinary
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"We are always looking for the book it is necessary to read next."

Book Next
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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."

Country California Needs
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"There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book."

Book Writing Sunset
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"Open discussion of many major public questions has for some time now been taboo. We can't open our mouths without being denounced as racists, misogynists, supremacists, imperialists or fascists. As for the media, they stand ready to trash anyone so designated."

Media Political Racist
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