Quote

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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Saul Bellow
Age: 89 †
Born: 1915
Born: June 10
Died: 2005
Died: April 5
Author
Essayist
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
Solomon Bellows
Seems
Deny
Soul
Indeed
Ideas
Ground
Annul
Find
Seem
Embodied
Sometimes
Hold
Altogether
Trying
Existence
Hostile
Force
Frequently
Often
Forces

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Fun comes hard - like, alas, its prarens, pleasure and happiness, whom we have to pursue.
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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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The two real problems in life are boredom and death.
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... unless you made your life a turning point, there was no reason for existing.
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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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People don't realize how much they are in the grip of ideas. We live among ideas much more than we live in nature.
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The best and purest human beings, from the beginning of time, have understood that life is sacred.
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Facts always are sensational.
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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.
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Death is the dark backing a mirror needs if we are to see anything
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Art is order, made out of the chaos of life.
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Alternatives, and particularly desirable alternatives, grow only on imaginary trees.
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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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One must bear in mind the odd angle or slant that the rays of love have to take in order to reach a heart like mine.
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Only self-hatred could lead him to ruin himself because his heart was broken.
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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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And I'm convinced that knowing the names of things braces people up.
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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.
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