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Alternatives, and particularly desirable alternatives, grow only on imaginary trees.

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
Decision
Grows
Desirable
Imaginary
Alternatives
Trees
Particularly
Grow
Tree

More quotes by Saul Bellow

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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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Boredom is the conviction that you can't change ... the shriek of unused capacities.
Saul Bellow
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Human character is smaller now, people don't have durable passions they've replaced passions with excitement.
Saul Bellow
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A human soul devoid of longing was a soul deformed, deprived of its highest good, sick unto death.
Saul Bellow
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One must bear in mind the odd angle or slant that the rays of love have to take in order to reach a heart like mine.
Saul Bellow
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The ocean was waiting with grand and bitter provocations, as if it invited you to think how deep it was, how much colder than your blood or saltier, or to outguess it, to tell which were its feints or passes and which its real intentions, meaning business.
Saul Bellow
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Only self-hatred could lead him to ruin himself because his heart was broken.
Saul Bellow
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The body, she says, is subject to the force of gravity. But the soul is ruled by levity, pure.
Saul Bellow
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What do women want? They eat green salad and drink human blood.
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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I am moneys medium. It passes through me- taxes, insurance, mortgage, child support, rent, legal fees. All this dignified blundering costs plenty.
Saul Bellow
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And I'm convinced that knowing the names of things braces people up.
Saul Bellow
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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.
Saul Bellow
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There is simply too much to think about.
Saul Bellow
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Boredom is an instrument of social control. Power is the power to impose boredom, to command stasis, to combine this stasis with anguish. The real tedium, deep tedium, is seasoned with terror and with death.
Saul Bellow
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It is a joy to be choked with thought.
Saul Bellow
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The stillness in art characterizes prayer, and the eye of the storm.
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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Well, everybody has a history.
Saul Bellow
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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.
Saul Bellow