Quote

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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Saul Bellow
Age: 89 †
Born: 1915
Born: June 10
Died: 2005
Died: April 5
Author
Essayist
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
Solomon Bellows
Either
Hate
Write
Must
Flat
Writing
Flats
Much
Indifferent
Like
Cold
People
Position

More quotes by Saul Bellow

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... an era of turmoil and ideological confusion, the principal phenomenon of the present age.
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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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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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What do women want? They eat green salad and drink human blood.
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If I'm out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.
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Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. But the over-examined life makes you wish you were dead. Given the alternative, I'd rather be living.
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There is simply too much to think about.
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With one long breath, caught and held in his chest, he fought his sadness over his solitary life. Don't cry, you idiot! Live or die, but don't poison everything.
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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.
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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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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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I am moneys medium. It passes through me- taxes, insurance, mortgage, child support, rent, legal fees. All this dignified blundering costs plenty.
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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.
Saul Bellow
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Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
Saul Bellow
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I blame myself for not often enough seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. Somewhere in his journals, Dostoyevky remarks that a writer can begin anywhere, at the most commonplace thing, scratch around in it long enough, pry and dig away long enough, and lo!, soon he will hit upon the marvelous.
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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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You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.
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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To tell the truth I never had it so good. But I lacked the strength of character to bear such joy.
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Art is order, made out of the chaos of life.
Saul Bellow