Saul Bellow Quotes

You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.

It's usually the selfish people who are loved the most. They do what you deny yourself, and you love them for it. You give them your heart.

A man is only as good as what he loves.

Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.

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...

A man may say, "From now on I'm going to speak the truth." But the truth hears him and runs away and hides before he's even done speaking.

The old continued to have one resurgence of foolishness after another, until the organism gave out altogether.

Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty; but learn to be happy alone.

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

If I'm out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.

People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.

You have to have the power to employ pain, to repent, to be illuminated, you must have the opportunity and even the time.

That’s the struggle of humanity, to recruit others to your version of what’s real

...between human beings there are only two alternatives, either brotherhood or crime.

The more you love people the more they'll mix you up.

In every community there is a class of people profoundly dangerous to the rest. I don't mean the criminals. For them we have punitive sanctions. I mean the leaders. Invariably the most dangerous people seek the power. While in the parlors of indignation the right-thinking citizen brings his heart to a boil. (p. 51)

He didn't ask "Where will you spend eternity?" as religious the-end-is-near picketers did but rather, "With what, in this modern democracy, will you meet the demands of your soul?

The body, she says, is subject to the force of gravity. But the soul is ruled by levity, pure.

Society is what beats me. Alone I can be pretty good, but let me go among people and there’s the devil to pay.

One thought-murder a day keeps the psychiatrist away.