"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.'"
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Quote collection
Saul Bellow quotes (page 4 of 12)
231 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The stillness in art characterizes prayer, and the eye of the storm."
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"One thought-murder a day keeps the psychiatrist away."
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"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."
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"With a novelist, like a surgeon, you have to get a feeling that you've fallen into good hands - someone from whom you can accept the anesthetic with confidence."
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"Fidelity is for phonographs"
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"... an era of turmoil and ideological confusion, the principal phenomenon of the present age."
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"Human character is smaller now, people don't have durable passions; they've replaced passions with excitement."
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"She was what we used to call a suicide blonde - dyed by her own hand."
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"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."
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"There is an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for."
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"I have begun in old age to understand...that we seldom if ever realize how generous we are to ourselves, and just how stingy with others."
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"Death is the dark backing a mirror needs if we are to see anything"
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"Alternatives, and particularly desirable alternatives, grow only on imaginary trees."
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"A man must have limits and cannot give in to the wild desires to be everything and everyone and everything to everyone."
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"Boredom is the conviction that you can't change ... the shriek of unused capacities."
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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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"The body, she says, is subject to the force of gravity. But the soul is ruled by levity, pure."
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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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"Live or die but don't poison everything."
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