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... unless you made your life a turning point, there was no reason for existing.

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
Life
Existing
Turning
Transformation
Unless
Point
Reason
Made

More quotes by Saul Bellow

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You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.
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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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
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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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She's very pretty but she's honey from the icebox, if you know what I mean. Cold sweets won't spread.
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
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It seems hard for the American people to believe that anything could be more exciting than the times themselves. What we read daily and view on the TV has thrust imagined forms into the shadow. We are staggeringly rich in facts, in things, and perhaps, like the nouveau riche of other ages, we want our wealth faithfully reproduced by the artist.
Saul Bellow
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Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.
Saul Bellow
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When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
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 said to myself that unless you conceive Death to be a violent guerrilla and kidnaper who snatches those you love, and if you are not cowardly and cannot submit to such terrorism as civilized people now do in every department of life, you must pursue and inquire and explore every possibility and seek everywhere and try everything.
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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The modern reader (or viewer, or listener: let's include everybody) is perilously overloaded. His attention is, to use the latest lingo,'targeted' by powerful forces? Our consciousness is a staging area, a field of operations for all kinds of enterprises, which make free use of it.
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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You have, like the external world, your own phenomena inside.
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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Boredom is the conviction that you can't change ... the shriek of unused capacities.
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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The more realistic you are the more you threaten the grounds of your own art.
Saul Bellow