Best Saul Bellow Quotes & Sayings

A man must have limits and cannot give in to the wild desires to be everything and everyone and everything to everyone. — Saul Bellow

People don't realize how much they are in the grip of ideas. We live among ideas much more than we live in nature. — Saul Bellow

Look here, because they were born you think they have to turn out to be men? That's just an old-fashioned idea. And who tells them that? A big organization. One more big organization. A big organization makes dough or it doesn't last. If it makes dough it's for dough. — Saul Bellow

I have begun in old age to understand just how oddly we all are put together. We are so proud of our autonomy that we seldom if ever realize how generous we are to ourselves, and just how stingy with others. One of the booby traps of freedom
which is bordered on all sides by isolation
is that we think so well of ourselves. I now see that I have helped myself to the best cuts at life's banquet. — Saul Bellow

There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book. — Saul Bellow

I still had the craving that I had given in to all summer long when I had lived on books, to have the reach to grasp both ends of the frame and turn the big image-taking glass to any scene of the world. — Saul Bellow

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. — Saul Bellow

I quit thinking long ago that all old people came to rest from the things they were out for in their younger years. — Saul Bellow

It is wrong to turn a man (a subject) into a thing (an object). By means of spiritual dialogue, the I-It relationship becomes an I-Thou relationship. God comes and goes in man's soul. And men come and go in each other's souls. Sometimes they come and go in each other's beds, too. — Saul Bellow

I am not an ornithologist - I am a bird. — Saul Bellow

He yelled, Charlie, you know where I am, don't you? All right, Charlie, this isn't literature. This is life. — Saul Bellow

There's the big advantage of backwardness. By the time the latest ideas reach Chicago, they're worn thin and easy to see through. You don't have to bother with them and it saves lots of trouble. — Saul Bellow

Alternatives, and particularly desirable alternatives, grow only on imaginary trees. — Saul Bellow

The flesh would shrink and go, the blood would dry, but no one believes in his mind of minds or heart of hearts that the pictures do stop. — Saul Bellow

A good novel is worth more then the best scientific study. — Saul Bellow

One of the bonds between Lily and me is that we both suffer with our teeth. She is twenty years my junior but we wear bridges, each of us. Mine are at the sides, hers are in front. She has lost the four upper incisors. It happened while she was still in high school, out playing golf with her father, whom she adored. The poor old guy was a lush and far too drunk to be out on a golf course that day. Without looking or given warning, he drove from the first tee and on the backswing struck his daughter. It always kills me to think of that cursed hot July golf course, and this drunk from the plumbing supply business, and the girl of fifteen bleeding. Damn these weak drunks! Damn these unsteady men! I can't stand these clowns who go out in public as soon as they get swacked to show how broken-hearted they are. But Lily would never hear a single word against him and wept for him sooner than for herself. She carries his photo in her wallet. — Saul Bellow

The same things are done by us, over and over, with terrible predictability. One may be forgiven, in view of this, for wishing at least to associate with beauty. — Saul Bellow

Apes in their own habitat are less sexually driven than those in captivity. It must be that captivity, boredom, breeds lustfulness. — Saul Bellow

You can know a man by his devils and the way he gives hurts. — Saul Bellow

That's swell. That's what I call answering like a man. When is your birthday?" "In January." "I'd have sworn to it. So is mine. I believe the highest types are born in January. It's barometric - you can look it up in Ellsworth Huntington. The parents make love in spring when the organism is healthiest and then the best specimens are conceived. If you want children you should plan to knock up your dear one in that season. Ancient wisdom is right. Now science comes lately and finds it out. — Saul Bellow

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

Sometimes I wonder," I said, "if people who are going to tell the truth shouldn't make sure first that they can defend themselves. — Saul Bellow

We are always looking for the book it is necessary to read next. — Saul Bellow

Even if I am not the honestest type in the world I don't want to lie more than is average. — Saul Bellow

Among contemporaries, I hugely admire Alice Munro, our Chekhov, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, and John Updike, American masters all. I also believe that the voice of Gordon Lish is astoundingly original and sorrowful. — Cynthia Ozick

Depressives cannot surrender childhood
not even the pains of childhood. — Saul Bellow

Art
the fresh feeling, new harmony, the transforming magic which by means of myth brings back the scattered distracted soul from its modern chaos
art, not politics, is the remedy. — Saul Bellow

You don't know the meaning of true love if you think it can be deliberately selected. You just love, that's all. A natural force, irresistible. — Saul Bellow

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. — Saul Bellow

Since the last question, also the first one, the quesiton of death, offers us the interesting alternatives of disintegrating ourselves by our own wills in proof of our "freedom," or the acknowledging that we owe a human life to this waking spell of existence, regardless of the void. — Saul Bellow

Oh shame, shame! Oh crying shame! How can we? Why do we allow ourselves? What are we doing? The last little room of dirt is waiting. Without windows. So for God's sake make a move, Henderson, put forth effort. You, too, will die of this pestilence. Death will annihilate you and nothing will remain, and there will be nothing left but junk ... While something still is
now! For the sake of all, get out! — Saul Bellow

Maybe America didn't need art and inner miracles. It had so many outer ones. The USA was a big operation, very big. The more it, the less we. — Saul Bellow

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. — Saul Bellow

In the history of the world many souls have been, are, and will be, and with a little reflection this is marvelous and not depressing. Many jerks are made gloomy about it, for they think quantity buries them alive. That's just crazy. Numbers are very dangerous, but the main thing about them is that they humble your pride. And that's good. — Saul Bellow

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

But she's a nut, and nuts win. — Saul Bellow

I was 17 when I decided to write stories as big as cathedrals, overflowing with the kind of memorable and audacious characters Walker Percy, Ernest Hemingway and Saul Bellow created. — Philip Schultz

My God! Who is this creature? It considers itself human. — Saul Bellow

Death discredits. Survival is the whole success. The voice of the dead goes away. There isn't any memory. The power that's established fills the earth and destiny is whatever survives, so whatever is is right. — Saul Bellow

But fathers are soft on daughters. Look how Dad favors Angela. He gave her ten times more. Because she reminded him of Mae West. He was always smiling at her boobs. He wasn't aware of it. Mother and I saw it. — Saul Bellow

The best and purest human beings, from the beginning of time, have understood that life is sacred. — Saul Bellow

Herzog abandoned this theme with characteristic abruptness — Saul Bellow