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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
Truth
Rewriting
Character
Smooth
Reason
Main
More quotes by Saul Bellow
The sand swallows burst out of their scupper holes in the bluffs and out over the transparent drown of the water, back again to the white, to the brown, to the black, from moving to stock-still sand waves and water-worked woods and roots that hugged and twisted in the sun.
Saul Bellow
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
Hapiness can only be found if you can free yourself of all other distractions.
Saul Bellow
A writer is a reader moved to emulation.
Saul Bellow
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.
Saul Bellow
At moments I dislike having a face, a nose, lips, because he has them.
Saul Bellow
Death deserves dignity.
Saul Bellow
Boredom is the conviction that you can't change ... the shriek of unused capacities.
Saul Bellow
The stillness in art characterizes prayer, and the eye of the storm.
Saul Bellow
... an era of turmoil and ideological confusion, the principal phenomenon of the present age.
Saul Bellow
The two real problems in life are boredom and death.
Saul Bellow
For the first time in history, the human species as a whole has gone into politics. Everyone is in the act, and there is no telling what may come of it.
Saul Bellow
I am deeply moved when I write. I get turned on by it. I've never used any drugs for stimulation. I don't use words loosely. When I'm working and the right word comes, there is an answering resonance within me. There is also a hardness of intention that goes with it. There is no idleness in it.
Saul Bellow
To tell the truth I never had it so good. But I lacked the strength of character to bear such joy.
Saul Bellow
The body, she says, is subject to the force of gravity. But the soul is ruled by levity, pure.
Saul Bellow
The soul has to find and hold its ground against hostile forces, sometimes embodied in ideas which frequently deny its very existence, and which indeed often seem to be trying to annul it altogether.
Saul Bellow
We are always looking for the book it is necessary to read next.
Saul Bellow
I've discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, 'To hell with you.'
Saul Bellow
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
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.
Saul Bellow
