Quotes from bellow saul ii

And everything soon must change. Men would set their watches by other suns than this.

Unexpected intrusions of beauty. That is what life is.

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.

The planet was our mother and our burial ground. No wonder the human spirit wished to leave. Leave this prolific belly. Leave also this great tomb.

As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn't make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting -- the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.

I've discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, "To hell with you."

I think that when I wrote those early books I was timid. I still felt the incredible effrontery of announcing myself to the world (in part I mean the WASP world) as a writer and an artist. I had to touch a great many bases, demonstrate my abilities, pay my respects to formal requirements. In short, I was afraid to let myself go.

I am a true adorer of life, and if I can't reach as high as the face of it, I plant my kiss somewhere lower down. Those who understand will require no further explanation.

From my earliest days I had a conviction that I was here to write certain things and so from the age of 13, I kept working at that. I was always very busy with my "project" so I'm afraid that I didn't notice much. Much of life has escaped me.

When I opened my eyes 82 years ago I found myself suddenly here, in existence, which struck me as marvellous, tremendously moving and energising. I'm here, this is my life! And these people coming at me, these strange, beautiful, marvellous people! You want to get a grip on that, to clutch that sense of what it is to be in the world.

I love solitude, but I prize it most when plenty of company is available.

Human character is smaller now, people don't have durable passions; they've replaced passions with excitement.