Quote

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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Saul Bellow
Age: 89 †
Born: 1915
Born: June 10
Died: 2005
Died: April 5
Author
Essayist
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
Solomon Bellows
Running
Away
Truth
May
Hides
Done
Hears
Even
Runs
Going
Speaking
Men
Speak

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From Euclid to Newton there were straight lines. The modern age analyzes the wavers.
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The writer cannot make the seas of distraction stand still, but he [or she] can at times come between the madly distracted and the distractions.
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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.
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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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Associate with the noblest people you can find read the best books live with the mighty but learn to be happy alone.
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Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining.
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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.
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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.
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The best and purest human beings, from the beginning of time, have understood that life is sacred.
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It seems, after all that there are no nonpeculiar people.
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It's no disgrace to be a private, you know. Socrates was a plain foot soldier, a hoplite.
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It is wrong to turn a man (a subject) into a thing (an object). By means of spiritual dialogue, the I-It relationship becomes an I-Thou relationship. God comes and goes in man's soul. And men come and go in each other's souls. Sometimes they come and go in each other's beds, too.
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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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Losing a parent is something like driving through a plate-glass window. You didn't know it was there until it shattered, and then for years to come you're picking up the pieces -- down to the last glassy splinter.
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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The more realistic you are the more you threaten the grounds of your own art.
Saul Bellow
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At moments I dislike having a face, a nose, lips, because he has them.
Saul Bellow
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Boredom is the conviction that you can't change ... the shriek of unused capacities.
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Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
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I want to tell you, don't marry suffering. Some people do. They get married to it, and sleep and eat together, just as husband and wife. If they go with joy they think it's adultery.
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