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I seem to have the blind self-acceptance of the eccentric who can't conceive that his eccentricities are not clearly understood.

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
Seems
Eccentricity
Self
Eccentric
Conceive
Acceptance
Clearly
Blind
Understood
Seem
Eccentricities

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A good novel is worth more then the best scientific study.
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Art attempts to find in the universe, in matter as well as in the facts of life, what is fundamental, enduring, essential.
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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?
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Live or die but don't poison everything.
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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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Excuse me ... but I reject your definitions of me.
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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.
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People don't realize how much they are in the grip of ideas. We live among ideas much more than we live in nature.
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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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A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life.
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What do women want? They eat green salad and drink human blood.
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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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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.'
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... a fellow can't predict what he will pick up in the form of influence.
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I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos.
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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
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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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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.
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There was a disturbance in my heart, a voice that spoke there and said, I want, I want, I want! It happened every afternoon, and when I tried to suppress it it got even stronger.
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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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