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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.

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
Wish
Unexamined
Living
Examined
Given
Socrates
Makes
Alternative
Life
Alternatives
Worth
Dead
Rather

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You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.
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Hapiness can only be found if you can free yourself of all other distractions.
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The main reason for rewriting is not to achieve a smooth surface, but to discover the inner truth of your characters.
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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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Death is the dark backing a mirror needs if we are to see anything
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Each man has his own batch of poems.
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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.
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We are all such accidents. We do not make up history and culture. We simply appear, not by our own choice. We make what we can of our condition with the means available. We must accept the mixture as we find it - the impurity of it, the tragedy of it, the hope of it.
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How should I know why! I didn't invent human beings, Iggy.
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You're all alone when you're a writer. Sometimes you just feel you need a humanity bath. Even a ride on the subway will do that. But it's much more interesting to talk about books. After all, that's what life used to be for writers: they talk books, politics, history, America. Nothing has replaced that.
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Facts always are sensational.
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When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
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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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Alternatives, and particularly desirable alternatives, grow only on imaginary trees.
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There is simply too much to think about.
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I must play the instrument I've got.
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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.
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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.
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And I'm convinced that knowing the names of things braces people up.
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Ninety per cent of life is a nightmare, do you think I am going to get it rounded up to hundred per cent?
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