Quotes from Saul Bellow

People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.

Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining.

Whoever wants to reach a distant goal must take small steps.

I must play the instrument I've got.

There is no limit to the amount of intelligence invested in ignorance when the need for illusion runs deep.

Conquered people tend to be witty.

Each man has his own batch of poems.

Take our politicians: they're a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of cliches.

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.

It would not be practical for her to hate herself. Luckily, God sends a substitute, a husband.

For God's sake,' the dog is saying, 'open the universe a little more!

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.

The best argument is an undeniably good book.

Americans must be the most sententious people in history. Far too busy to be religious, they have always felt that they sorely needed guidance.

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

Fun comes hard - like, alas, its prarens, pleasure and happiness, whom we have to pursue.

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

What is art but a way of seeing?

The stillness in art characterizes prayer, and the eye of the storm.

I would like to explain that I consider prayer above all an act of gratitude for existence.

A writer is in the broadest sense a spokesman of his community. Through him that community comes to know its heart. Without such knowledge, how long can it survive?

You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.

With one long breath, caught and held in his chest, he fought his sadness over his solitary life. Don't cry, you idiot! Live or die, but don't poison everything.

A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life.