Saul Bellow Quotes

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

The terms which, in his inmost heart, each man knows. As I know mine. As all know. For that is the truth of it — that we all know, God, that we know, that we know, we know, we know.

To rip off a piece of lover's temper was a pleasure in her deepest vein of enjoyment.

Unfortunately for the betterment of mankind it is not always the fair-minded who are in the right.

Well, I need a job. Something that'll leave me the free time I want.I like the way you arrange your life. What do you intend to do with this free time?I intend to use it. I didn't like the implication...

What art thou?' Nothing. That's the answer. Nothing. In the heart of hearts- Nothing! So of course you can't stand that and want to be Something, and you try. But instead of being this Something, the...

A man is only as good as what he loves.

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

Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.

New York makes one think of the collapse of civilization, about Sodom and Gomorrah, the end of the world. The end wouldn't come as a surprise here. Many people already bank on it.

All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he's a writer. It's an aphrodisiac.

Being right was largely a matter of explanations.

Do you have feelings? There are correct and incorrect ways of indicating them. Do you have an inner life? It is nobody's business but your own. Do you have emotions? Strangle them.

I knew by this time what Thea thought of these people and in fact of most people, with their faulty humanity. She couldn't stand them. And what her eccentricity amounted to was that she proposed a dif...

On Broadway it was still bright afternoon and the gassy air was almost motionless under the leaden spokes of sunlight, and sawdust footprints lay about the doorways of butcher shops and fruit stores....

Readiness to answer all questions is the infallible sign of stupidity.

The only truly intersting side of the matter was the intimate design of the injury, the fact that it was so penetrating, custom-made exactly to your measure. It's fascinating that hatred should be so...

It greatly bothered him that I had such a flunky job, washing cages and sweeping up dogs' hair; and also that I was no longer a college man but trying to keep up on Helmholtz who was a dead number to...

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

So things go on as before with those who think a great deal and effect nothing, and those who think nothing evidently doing it all...