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The main reason for rewriting is not to achieve a smooth surface, but to discover the inner truth of your characters.

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
Discover
Surface
Inner
Characters
Achieve
Rewriting
Truth
Smooth
Character
Main
Reason

More quotes by Saul Bellow

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How should I know why! I didn't invent human beings, Iggy.
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... an era of turmoil and ideological confusion, the principal phenomenon of the present age.
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In expressing love we belong among the undeveloped countries.
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A writer is in the broadest sense a spokesman of his community. Through him that community comes to know its heart. Without such knowledge, how long can it survive?
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Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
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Here we write well when we expose frauds and hypocrites. We are great at counting warts and blemishes and weighting feet of clay. In expressing love, we belong among the underdeveloped countries.
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An exchange occurs between man and woman. Love and thought complete each other in the human pair, and something like an exchange of souls takes place, according to the divine plan.
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Psychoanalysis pretends to investigate the Unconscious. The Unconscious by definition is what you are not conscious of. But the Analysts already know what's in it - they should, because they put it all in beforehand.
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To tell the truth I never had it so good. But I lacked the strength of character to bear such joy.
Saul Bellow
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It's not up to me ... to make the world consistent.
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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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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.
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Americans must be the most sententious people in history. Far too busy to be religious, they have always felt that they sorely needed guidance.
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It's no disgrace to be a private, you know. Socrates was a plain foot soldier, a hoplite.
Saul Bellow
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From Euclid to Newton there were straight lines. The modern age analyzes the wavers.
Saul Bellow
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One way or another the no doubt mad idea entered my mind that my own actions had historic importance and this fantasy (?) made it appear that people who harmed me were interfering with an important experiment.
Saul Bellow
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The modern reader (or viewer, or listener: let's include everybody) is perilously overloaded. His attention is, to use the latest lingo,'targeted' by powerful forces? Our consciousness is a staging area, a field of operations for all kinds of enterprises, which make free use of it.
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.
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The life of every citizen is becoming a business. This, it seems to me, is one of the worst interpretations of the meaning of human life history has ever seen. Man's life is not a business.
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I must play the instrument I've got.
Saul Bellow