Quotes from Saul Bellow

I am deeply moved when I write. I get turned on by it. I've never used any drugs for stimulation. I don't use words loosely. When I'm working and the right word comes, there is an answering resonance within me. There is also a hardness of intention that goes with it. There is no idleness in it.

Disease is a speech of the psyche. ...the psyche is a polyglot, for if it converts fear into symptoms it also converts hope.

In this view the body itself, with its two arms and vertical length, was compared to the Cross, on which you knew the agony of consciousness and separate being.

Creative is nature. Rapid. Lavish. Inspirational. It shapes leaves. It rolls the waters of the earth. Man is the chief of this. All creations are his just inheritance.

I am giving up the violin. I guess I will never reach my object through it," to raise my spirit from the earth, to leave the body of this death. I was very stubborn. I wanted to raise myself into another world. My life and deeds were a prison.

You take too many pills of every kind—first stimulants and then depressants, anodynes followed by analeptics, until the poor organism doesn't know what's happened.

The people who come to evening classes are only ostensibly after culture. Their great need, their hunger, is for good sense, clarity, truth – even an atom of it. People are dying – it is no metaphor – for lack of something real to carry home when day is done.

In every community there is a class of people profoundly dangerous to the rest. I don't mean the criminals. For them we have punitive sanctions. I mean the leaders. Invariably the most dangerous people seek the power.

Da budem iskren, nikada mi nije bilo bolje, napisao je. Ali nisam imao dovoljno snažan karakter da podnosim takvu radost. To zapravo i nije bila šala. Kad ?ovjek osje?a da su mu grudi poput krletke iz koje su izletjele sve tamne ptice - on je slobodan, lagan. I ?ezne za tim da mu se vrate njegovi lešinari. Želi svoje uobi?ajne sukobe, bezimena, prazna djela, svoju ogor?enost, jad i grijehe.

told him a lot, right then and there. What? Well, for instance, that chaos doesn't run the whole show. That this is not a sick and hasty ride, helpless, through a dream into oblivion. No, sir! It can be arrested by a thing or two. By art, for instance. The speed is checked, the time is redivided. Measure! That great thought. Mystery! The voices of angels!

Stvarna zemaljska kugla nije tako bistra, nego zamu?ena, uzburkana. Odvija se golema ljudska djelatnost. Smrt vreba. Zato, ako osje?aš malo sre?e, sakrij je. A kad ti je srce puno, šuti isto tako.

feel like a lousy impostor. The only decent thing about me is that I have loved certain people in my life.

I labor, I spend, I strive, I design, I love, I cling, I uphold, I give way, I envy, I long, I scorn, I die, I hide, I want.

Todo o mercado de sentimentos e sensações subiu - o choque, o escândalo encontram-se a um preço inacessível ao homem comum. É preciso fazer mais do que sofrer uma intoxicação por gás, ou cortar os pulsos.

The value of literature lies in these intermittent 'true impressions.' A novel moves back and forth between the world of objects, of actions, of appearances, and that other world, from which these 'true impressions' come and which moves us to believe that the good we hang on to so tenaciously—in the face of evil, so obstinately—is no illusion.

His taste in clothes was horrible, but he didn't buy cheap things. He wore corduroy or velvet shirts from Clyde's, painted neckties, striped socks.

But this was more mental… mental deceit; dream. My head was out of order, as I realized even then. I was most aware of it at night, under the influence of fever, when mountains and idols and cattle and lions, and gross black women, the amazons, and the face of the king and the thatch of the hopo visited my mind, coming and going unannounced.

Ne biti budala možda nije vrijedno teških alternativa.

That's from the Middle Ages.' My God! We have a name for everything except what we really think and feel.

all the ingenuity of mankind, or as M. Yermelov used to say, intellect without soul, was turned loose—the will of the insane to suffer pouring into erotic channels.

Vrlo osebujan tip lu?aka vjeruje da ?e usaditi svoja na?ela. (...) U?itelji stvarnosti. Oni žele da vam daju poruku - da vas kazne poukom - o Stvarnom.

and suffering is another bad habit.

No one seemed satisfied, and Wilhelm was especially horrified by the cynicism of successful people. Cynicism was bread and meat to everyone And irony, too. Maybe it couldn't be helped.

First these people murdered you, then they forced you to brood over their crimes.