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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Saul Bellow

Image
She's very pretty but she's honey from the icebox, if you know what I mean. Cold sweets won't spread.
Saul Bellow
Image
When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
Saul Bellow
Image
It wasn't that he was specially ungenerous but that he put things off to give his generosity a longer and more significant route.
Saul Bellow
Image
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
Image
An exchange occurs between man and woman. Love and thought complete each other in the human pair, and something like an exchange of souls takes place, according to the divine plan.
Saul Bellow
Image
Live or die but don't poison everything.
Saul Bellow
Image
You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.
Saul Bellow
Image
A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life.
Saul Bellow
Image
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
Image
I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos.
Saul Bellow
Image
I seem to have the blind self-acceptance of the eccentric who can't conceive that his eccentricities are not clearly understood.
Saul Bellow
Image
The main reason for rewriting is not to achieve a smooth surface, but to discover the inner truth of your characters.
Saul Bellow
Image
In an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness. But the pursuit of sanity can be a form of madness, too
Saul Bellow
Image
I am deeply moved when I write. I get turned on by it. I've never used any drugs for stimulation. I don't use words loosely. When I'm working and the right word comes, there is an answering resonance within me. There is also a hardness of intention that goes with it. There is no idleness in it.
Saul Bellow
Image
The more realistic you are the more you threaten the grounds of your own art.
Saul Bellow
Image
It is sometimes necessary to repeat what all know. All mapmakers should place the Mississippi in the same location and avoid originality.
Saul Bellow
Image
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
Image
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.
Saul Bellow
Image
My face too blind, my mind too limited, my instincts too narrow. But this intensity, doesn't it mean anything?
Saul Bellow
Image
... a fellow can't predict what he will pick up in the form of influence.
Saul Bellow