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A writer is a reader moved to emulation.

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
Writing
Emulation
Moved
Reader
Writer

More quotes by 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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O Lord! he concluded, forgive all these trespasses. Lead me not into Penn Station.
Saul Bellow
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I'm afraid there's nothing we can do about the journalists we can only hope that they will die off as the deerflies do towards the end of August.
Saul Bellow
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You have one of two choices. Either you can panic and start making frantic attempts to reform under the glare of these awful critical eyes, or you can just say, The hell with you! I know what I'm doing. If you don't yet, it's because you haven't given me an attentive reading.
Saul Bellow
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It wasn't that he was specially ungenerous but that he put things off to give his generosity a longer and more significant route.
Saul Bellow
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The ocean was waiting with grand and bitter provocations, as if it invited you to think how deep it was, how much colder than your blood or saltier, or to outguess it, to tell which were its feints or passes and which its real intentions, meaning business.
Saul Bellow
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In expressing love we belong among the undeveloped countries.
Saul Bellow
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The two real problems in life are boredom and death.
Saul Bellow
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Art attempts to find in the universe, in matter as well as in the facts of life, what is fundamental, enduring, essential.
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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I’ve had all the monstrosity I want.
Saul Bellow
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The best and purest human beings, from the beginning of time, have understood that life is sacred.
Saul Bellow
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In an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness. But the pursuit of sanity can be a form of madness, too
Saul Bellow
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Readiness to answer all questions is the infallible sign of stupidity.
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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In politics continental Europe was infantile - horrifying. What America lacked, for all its political stability, was the capacity to enjoy intellectual pleasures as though they were sensual pleasures. This is what Europe offered, or was said to offer.
Saul Bellow
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... unless you made your life a turning point, there was no reason for existing.
Saul Bellow
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When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
Saul Bellow
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People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.
Saul Bellow
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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.
Saul Bellow