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Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow Quotes

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Famous Saul Bellow Quotes

“It seems hard for the American people to believe that anything could be more exciting than the times themselves. What we read daily and view on the TV has thrust imagined forms into the shadow. We are staggeringly rich in facts, in things, and perhaps, like the nouveau riche of other ages, we want our wealth faithfully reproduced by the artist.”

PeopleWantBelieveHardFactsSeemsAgeFormArtistWealthViewsRichTvsShadowExcitingThrustNouveau Riche
Book:It All Adds Up: From the Dim Past to the Uncertain Future
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“In an age of enormities, the emotions are naturally weakened. We are continually called upon to have feelings - about genocide, for instance, or about famine or the blowing up of passenger planes - and we are all aware that we are incapable of reacting appropriately. A guilty consciousness of emotional inadequacy or impotence makes people doubt their own human weight.”

PeopleHumansFeelingsAgeEmotionConsciousnessDoubtEmotionalWeightGuiltyInstancePlanesGenocideIncapableFaminePassengersReactingImpotenceInadequacyBlowing Up
Book:It All Adds Up: From the Dim Past to the Uncertain Future
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“And I said to myself that unless you conceive Death to be a violent guerrilla and kidnaper who snatches those you love, and if you are not cowardly and cannot submit to such terrorism as civilized people now do in every department of life, you must pursue and inquire and explore every possibility and seek everywhere and try everything.”

PeopleIfsTryingSaidPossibilityTerrorismViolentPursueDepartmentCivilizedSubmitCowardlyGuerrillasThose You Love
Book:Humboldt's Gift
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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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“...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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