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Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow Quotes

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Famous Saul Bellow Quotes

“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.”

WritingLongEnoughSeeingOrdinaryBlameExtraordinaryMarvelousJournalScratchesRemarksCommonplace
Book:Conversations with Saul Bellow
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“Because I have become such a solitary, and not in the Aristotelian sense: not a beast, not a god. Rather, a loner troubled by longings, incapable of finding a suitable language and despairing at the impossibility of composing messages in a playable key--as if I no longer understood the codes used by the estimable people who wanted to hear from me and would have so much to reply if only the impediments were taken away.”

PeopleIfsWantedUsedLanguageTakenKeysFindingsMessagesUnderstoodLongingCodeBeastSolitaryIncapableImpossibilitySuitableLonerComposingImpediments
Book:Saul Bellow: Letters
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“Everyone tries to create a world he can live in, and what he can't use he often can't see. But the real world is already created, and if your fabrication doesn't correspond, then even if you feel noble and insist on there being something better than what people call reality, that better something needn't try to exceed what, in its actuality, since we know it so little, may be very surprising. If a happy state of things, surprising; if miserable or tragic, no worse than what we invent.”

PeopleIfsKnowsWorldFeelsTryingMayLittlesRealStatesUseRealityNobleMiserableTragicReal WorldSurprisingExceedSomething BetterActualityFabricationOften Can
Author:Saul Bellow
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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.”

MeanChoicesCultureAcceptingConditionsTragedyAvailableAccidentsMixturesImpurityHistory And Culture
Book:There Is Simply Too Much to Think About: Collected Nonfiction
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“Those who have a why to live for can bear almost any how. The necessary premise is that a person is somehow more than his or her "characteristics," all the emotions, strivings, tastes, and constructions which it pleases us to call "My Life." We have grounds to hope that a Life is something more than a cloud of particles, mere facticity. Go through what is comprehensible and you conclude that only the incomprehensible gives any light.”

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Author:Saul Bellow
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“...America didn't have to fight scarcity and we all felt guilty before people who still had to struggle for bread and freedom in the old way ... We weren't starving, we weren't bugged by the police, locked up in madhouses for our ideas, arrested, deported, slave laborers sent to die in concentration camps. We were spared the holocausts and nights of terror. With our advantages we should be formulating the new basic questions for mankind. But instead we sleep. Just sleep and sleep, and eat and play and fuss and sleep again.”

PeopleWayShouldStillsIdeasPlayAmericaNightDiesFightingFeltSleepStruggleMankindAdvantagePoliceSlaveTerrorBreadGuiltyConcentrationCampsHolocaustLockedStarvingArrestedScarcityLocked UpLaborersConcentration CampOld WaysMadhouses
Author:Saul Bellow
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