Quote

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

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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
Real
Command
Stasis
Terror
Seasoned
Instruments
Tedium
Deep
Combine
Control
Impose
Social
Anguish
Death
Boredom
Power
Instrument

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Readiness to answer all questions is the infallible sign of stupidity.
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We are always looking for the book it is necessary to read next.
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People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.
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What do women want? They eat green salad and drink human blood.
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You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.
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The two real problems in life are boredom and death.
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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.
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If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.
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It seems, after all that there are no nonpeculiar people.
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A good novel is worth more then the best scientific study.
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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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Art is order, made out of the chaos of life.
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We mustn't forget how quickly the visions of genius become the canned goods of intellectuals.
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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.
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Is our species crazy? Plenty of evidence.
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Retirement is an illusion. Not a reward but a mantrap. The bankrupt underside of success. A shortcut to death. Golf courses are too much like cemeteries.
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It seems hard for the American people to believe that anything could be more exciting than the times themselves. What we read daily and view on the TV has thrust imagined forms into the shadow. We are staggeringly rich in facts, in things, and perhaps, like the nouveau riche of other ages, we want our wealth faithfully reproduced by the artist.
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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.
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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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