Quote

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

Saul Bellow

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Saul Bellow
Age: 89 †
Born: 1915
Born: June 10
Died: 2005
Died: April 5
Author
Essayist
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
Solomon Bellows
Life
Balanced
Impression
False
Ones
Novel
Call
Impressions
True
Multitude
Make
Multitudes

More quotes by Saul Bellow

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Alternatives, and particularly desirable alternatives, grow only on imaginary trees.
Saul Bellow
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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 seem to have the blind self-acceptance of the eccentric who can't conceive that his eccentricities are not clearly understood.
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It is sometimes necessary to repeat what all know. All mapmakers should place the Mississippi in the same location and avoid originality.
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There's a kind of emptiness at the center of life ... nothing to form your life on, or by.
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I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.
Saul Bellow
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It's not up to me ... to make the world consistent.
Saul Bellow
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... a fellow can't predict what he will pick up in the form of influence.
Saul Bellow
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I don't like to write from a flat, cold position. You must like what you're doing very much or like the people -- either like them or hate them. You can't be indifferent.
Saul Bellow
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You're all alone when you're a writer. Sometimes you just feel you need a humanity bath. Even a ride on the subway will do that. But it's much more interesting to talk about books. After all, that's what life used to be for writers: they talk books, politics, history, America. Nothing has replaced that.
Saul Bellow
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In the history of the world many souls have been, are, and will be, and with a little reflection this is marvelous and not depressing. Many jerks are made gloomy about it, for they think quantity buries them alive. That's just crazy. Numbers are very dangerous, but the main thing about them is that they humble your pride. And that's good.
Saul Bellow
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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.
Saul Bellow
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And I said to myself that unless you conceive Death to be a violent guerrilla and kidnaper who snatches those you love, and if you are not cowardly and cannot submit to such terrorism as civilized people now do in every department of life, you must pursue and inquire and explore every possibility and seek everywhere and try everything.
Saul Bellow
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Is our species crazy? Plenty of evidence.
Saul Bellow
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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.
Saul Bellow
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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.
Saul Bellow
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Conquered people tend to be witty.
Saul Bellow
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A man may say, From now on I'm going to speak the truth. But the truth hears him and runs away and hides before he's even done speaking.
Saul Bellow
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Death is the dark backing a mirror needs if we are to see anything
Saul Bellow
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If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.
Saul Bellow