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The two real problems in life are boredom and death.

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
Death
Two
Problem
Real
Life
Boredom
Problems

More quotes by 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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When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
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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There's a kind of emptiness at the center of life ... nothing to form your life on, or by.
Saul Bellow
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I’ve had all the monstrosity I want.
Saul Bellow
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You have, like the external world, your own phenomena inside.
Saul Bellow
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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.
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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In politics continental Europe was infantile - horrifying. What America lacked, for all its political stability, was the capacity to enjoy intellectual pleasures as though they were sensual pleasures. This is what Europe offered, or was said to offer.
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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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
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Losing a parent is something like driving through a plate-glass window. You didn't know it was there until it shattered, and then for years to come you're picking up the pieces -- down to the last glassy splinter.
Saul Bellow
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People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.
Saul Bellow
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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
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The best and purest human beings, from the beginning of time, have understood that life is sacred.
Saul Bellow
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What do women want? They eat green salad and drink human blood.
Saul Bellow
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I don’t actually take much stock in the collapsing culture bit. I’m beginning to see it instead as the conduct of life without input from your soul.
Saul Bellow
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Is our species crazy? Plenty of evidence.
Saul Bellow
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Open discussion of many major public questions has for some time now been taboo. We can't open our mouths without being denounced as racists, misogynists, supremacists, imperialists or fascists. As for the media, they stand ready to trash anyone so designated.
Saul Bellow
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I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos.
Saul Bellow