xy

@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023

Favourite quotes (21448)

“One naturally regrets not being an expert or one of those insiders who thoroughly understand. It's hell to be an amateur. A little reflection calms your sorrow, however. The experts in their own little speedboat, the rest of us floating with the rest of mankind in a great barge — that is the picture.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

"The Day They Signed the Treaty" (1979), p. 224
It All Adds Up (1994)

“We are free to withdraw (to withdraw our minds where we cannot withdraw our bodies) from situations in which our humanity or lack of it is defined for us.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

Part II, p. 29
A Jewish Writer in America (2011)

“Can we find nothing good to say about TV? Well, yes, it brings scattered solitaries into a sort of communion. TV allows your isolated American to think that he participates in the life of the entire country. It does not actually place him in a community, but his heart is warmed with the suggestion (on the whole false) that there is a community somewhere in the vicinity and that his atomized consciousness will be drawn back toward the whole.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

"The Distracted Public" (1990), p. 159
It All Adds Up (1994)

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

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

Attributed in Fun Fitness for Families (2005) by James Steffen, p. 24 and later publications; also attributed to Helmut Schmidt, in The 7 Ultimate Secrets to Weight Loss (2011) by Natasa Denman, p. 31 and later publications.
Disputed

“Once you had read the Psychopathology of Everyday Life, you knew that everyday life was psychopathology.”

Saul Bellow book Humboldt's Gift

Humboldt's Gift (1975) [Penguin Classics, 1996, ISBN 0-140-18944-0], p. 5
General sources

“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.”

Saul Bellow book The Adventures of Augie March

Source: The Adventures of Augie March (1953), Ch. 6

“One’s language is a spiritual location. It houses your soul. If you were born in America all essential communication, your deepest conversations with yourself, will be in English. … Your English is the principal instrument of your humanity.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

Part I, p. 27
A Jewish Writer in America (2011)

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

Saul Bellow book The Adventures of Augie March

Source: The Adventures of Augie March (1953), Ch. 1

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

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

As quoted in "Dailer's Choice" by Harriet Van Horne, in New York Magazine Vol. 10, No. 13 (28 March 1977), p. 80
General sources

“For the first time in history, the human species as a whole has gone into politics. Everyone is in the act, and there is no telling what may come of it.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account (1976), p. 38
General sources

“I never yet touched a fig leaf that didn't turn into a price tag.”

Saul Bellow book Humboldt's Gift

Humboldt's Gift (1975), p. 159
General sources

“There are evils, as someone has pointed out, that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever — money, for instance, or war.”

Saul Bellow book The Dean's December

The Dean’s December (1982) [Penguin Classics, 1998, ISBN 0-140-18913-0], ch. 13, p. 140
General sources

“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.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

Quoted by Granville Hicks in The Living Novel: A Symposium (Macmillan, 1957; digitized version in 2006), p. ix
General sources

“I think that New York is not the cultural center of America, but the business and administrative center of American culture.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

BBC radio interview, The Listener (London, 1969-05-22)
General sources

“Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love.”

Saul Bellow book Dangling Man

Dangling Man (1944) [Penguin Classics, 1996, ISBN 0-140-18935-1], p. 84
General sources

“Facts always are sensational.”

Saul Bellow book Seize the Day

Source: Seize the Day

“Ninety per cent of life is a nightmare, do you think I am going to get it rounded up to hundred per cent?”

Saul Bellow book Humboldt's Gift

Source: Humboldt's Gift

“Nobody asks you to love the whole world, only to be honest, ehrlich. Don't have a loud mouth. The more you love people the more they'll mix you up. A child loves, a person respects. Respect is better than love.”

Saul Bellow book The Adventures of Augie March

Source: The Adventures of Augie March

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

Saul Bellow book Herzog

Source: Herzog

“We are always looking for the book it is necessary to read next.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer