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There are times when the most practical thing is to lie down.

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
Thing
Inaction
Practicals
Practical
Lying
Times

More quotes by Saul Bellow

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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.
Saul Bellow
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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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Human character is smaller now, people don't have durable passions they've replaced passions with excitement.
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.
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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.
Saul Bellow
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My face too blind, my mind too limited, my instincts too narrow. But this intensity, doesn't it mean anything?
Saul Bellow
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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.
Saul Bellow
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I have, perhaps, a slave-like constitution which is too easily restrained by bonds it then becomes rebellious and bursts out in a comic revolution.
Saul Bellow
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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.
Saul Bellow
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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.
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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If I had a child of school age, I would send him to one of the Waldorf Schools.
Saul Bellow
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One of the booby traps of freedom - which is bordered on all sides by isolation - is that we think so well of ourselves. I now see that I have helped myself to the best cuts at life's banquet.
Saul Bellow
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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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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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I immersed myself in The Periodic Table gladly and gratefully. There is nothing superfluous here, everything this book contains is essential. It is wonderful pure, and beautifully translated...I was deeply impressed.
Saul Bellow
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A good novel is worth more then the best scientific study.
Saul Bellow
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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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... an era of turmoil and ideological confusion, the principal phenomenon of the present age.
Saul Bellow
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A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
Saul Bellow