Quote

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.

Saul Bellow

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Saul Bellow
Age: 89 †
Born: 1915
Born: June 10
Died: 2005
Died: April 5
Author
Essayist
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
Solomon Bellows
Smoking
Wearing
Advantage
Harder
Also
Find
Feels
Cigar
Men
Hats

More quotes by Saul Bellow

Image
Excuse me ... but I reject your definitions of me.
Saul Bellow
Image
In here, the human bosom -- mine, yours, everybody's -- there isn't just one soul. There's a lot of souls. But there are two main ones, the real soul and a pretender soul. Now! Every man realizes that he has to love something or somebody. He feels that he must go outward. 'If thou canst not love, what art thou?' Are you with me?
Saul Bellow
Image
People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.
Saul Bellow
Image
Human character is smaller now, people don't have durable passions they've replaced passions with excitement.
Saul Bellow
Image
Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
Saul Bellow
Image
At moments I dislike having a face, a nose, lips, because he has them.
Saul Bellow
Image
I seem to have the blind self-acceptance of the eccentric who can't conceive that his eccentricities are not clearly understood.
Saul Bellow
Image
The more realistic you are the more you threaten the grounds of your own art.
Saul Bellow
Image
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
Image
Fidelity is for phonographs
Saul Bellow
Image
I labor, I spend, I strive, I design, I love, I cling, I uphold, I give way, I envy, I long, I scorn, I die, I hide, I want. Faster, much faster than any man could make the tally.
Saul Bellow
Image
Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.
Saul Bellow
Image
There's a kind of emptiness at the center of life ... nothing to form your life on, or by.
Saul Bellow
Image
How should I know why! I didn't invent human beings, Iggy.
Saul Bellow
Image
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.
Saul Bellow
Image
All human accomplishment has the same origin, identically. Imagination is a force of nature. Is this not enough to make a person full of ecstasy? Imagination, imagination, imagination.
Saul Bellow
Image
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
Image
It's no disgrace to be a private, you know. Socrates was a plain foot soldier, a hoplite.
Saul Bellow
Image
You have, like the external world, your own phenomena inside.
Saul Bellow
Image
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