Quotes from Saul Bellow

Oh shame, shame! Oh crying shame! How can we? Why do we allow ourselves? What are we doing? The last little room of dirt is waiting. Without windows. So for God's sake make a move, Henderson, put forth effort. You, too, will die of this pestilence. Death will annihilate you and nothing will remain, and there will be nothing left but junk...While something still is -- now! For the sake of all, get out!

But the best-treated, most favored and intelligent part of any society is often the most ungrateful. Ingratitude, however, is its social function.

But in the end I said, 'It's terribly serious, of course, but I think more people die of heartbreak than of radiation.

There haven't been civilizations without cities. But what about cities without civilizations? An inhuman thing, if possible, to have so many people together who beget nothing on one another. No, but it is not possible, and the dreary begets its own fire, and so this never happens.

Everybody I ever knew wanted to show in some way how he held the world together. This only comes from feeling the strain of holding yourself together, and it gets exaggerated into the whole world from the hard labor you put into it.

What's life? Metabolism? That's what it is for the bugs.

In Los Angeles all the loose objects in the country were collected, as if America had been tilted and everything that wasn't tightly screwed down had slid into Southern California.

These were his friends of the business community; a man in business had to have such, and he visited and entertained but neither touched nor was touched, ever.

Will never understand what women want. What do they want? They eat green salad and drink human blood.

Cunado uno se vuelve contra sí mismo, tampoco los demás significan ya nada para él

Under the changes of weather it may look like marble or like sea water, black as slate in the fog, white as tufa in sunlight.

He liked to wear good clothes, but once he had put it on each article appeared to go its own way.

On the simplest level he could tell you in detail what he felt—what effects an aspirin had on him, what it did to the back of his neck or the inside of his mouth. I was curious about this, because for the life of them most people can't describe what goes on inside. Alcoholics or druggies are too confused, hypochondriacs are their own terrorists, and most of us are aware only of a metabolic uproar within.

If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.

Whenever I write a dramatic poem I can't understand why the characters should ever want to be anything but poets themselves.

Some people embrace their gifts with gratitude. Others have no use for them and can think only of overcoming their weaknesses. Only their defects interest and challenge them. Thus those who hate people may seek them out. Misanthropes often practice psychiatry. The shy become performers. Natural thieves look for positions of trust. The frightened make bold moves.

When a man's breast feels like a cage from which all the dark birds have flown—he is free, he is light. And he longs to have his vultures back again. He wants his customary struggles, his nameless, empty works, his anger, his afflictions and his sins.

I am not at all sorry to part with the rest of it. I am no longer to be held accountable for myself. I am grateful for that. I am in other hands, relieved of self determination, freedom canceled. Hooray for regular hours! And, for the supervision of the spirit! Long live regimentation.

A man like you, humble for life, who wants to feel and live, has trouble—not wanting," said Tamkin in his parenthetical fashion, "to exchange an ounce of soul for a pound of social power—he'll never make it without help in a world like this.

Even if I am not the honestest type in the world I don't want to lie more than is average.

You saw how he put his paws over my face so I couldn't breathe?" she said. "God made him to be a butcher. Why did he become a dentist? His hands are too heavy. The touch is everything to a dentist. If his hands aren't right he shouldn't be let practice. But his wife worked hard to send him through school and make a dentist of him. And I must go to him and be burned because of it.

You're used to difficult women. To struggle. Perhaps you like it when they give you a bad time." "Every treasure is guarded by dragons. That's how you can tell it's valuable.… Do you mind if I unbutton my collar? It seems to be pressing on an artery.

It was all there. Only he was not through with love and hate elsewhere.

I quit thinking long ago that all old people came to rest from the things they were out for in their younger years.