xy

@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023

Favourite quotes (21448)

“It seems, after all that there are no nonpeculiar people.”

Saul Bellow book Humboldt's Gift

Source: Humboldt's Gift

“One must bear in mind the odd angle or slant that the rays of love have to take in order to reach a heart like mine.”

Saul Bellow book Humboldt's Gift

Source: Humboldt's Gift

“She's very pretty but she's honey from the icebox, if you know what I mean. Cold sweets won't spread.”

Saul Bellow book Humboldt's Gift

Source: Humboldt's Gift

“Unless you're completely exploded, there's always something to be grateful for.”

Saul Bellow book Herzog

Source: Herzog

“Conquered people tend to be witty.”

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

Mr. Sammler's planet, (1976), p. 98
General sources

“All human accomplishment has the same origin, identically. Imagination is a force of nature. Is this not enough to make a person full of ecstasy? Imagination, imagination, imagination. It converts to actual. It sustains, it alters, it redeems!”

Saul Bellow book Henderson the Rain King

General sources
Source: Henderson the Rain King (1959) [Viking/Penguin, 1984, ISBN 0-140-07269-1], ch. XVIII, p. 271

“Boredom is an instrument of social control. Power is the power to impose boredom, to command stasis, to combine this stasis with anguish. The real tedium, deep tedium, is seasoned with terror and with death.”

Saul Bellow book Humboldt's Gift

Source: Humboldt's Gift

“Some people, if they didn't make it hard for themselves, might fall asleep.”

Saul Bellow book The Adventures of Augie March

Source: The Adventures of Augie March

“I mean you have been disappointed in love, but don't you know how many things there are to be disappointed in besides love? You are lucky to be still disappointed in love. Later it may be even more terrible.”

Saul Bellow book The Adventures of Augie March

Source: The Adventures of Augie March

“Bringing people into the here-and-now. The real universe. That's the present moment. The past is no good to us. The future is full of anxiety. Only the present is real--the here-and-now. Seize the day.”

Saul Bellow book Seize the Day

Source: Seize the Day

“You have to fight for your life. That's the chief condition on which you hold it.”

Saul Bellow book Herzog

Source: Herzog

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

Saul Bellow book Ravelstein

Source: Ravelstein

“Myself is thus and so, and will continue thus and so. And why fight it? My balance comes from instability.”

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

“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.”

Saul Bellow book Henderson the Rain King

Source: Henderson the Rain King

“She was what we used to call a suicide blonde-- dyed by her own hand.”

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

“People don't realize how much they are in the grip of ideas. We live among ideas much more than we live in nature.”

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

Source: Conversations with Saul Bellow

“I love solitude but I prize it most when company is available.”

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

“I want to tell you, don't marry suffering. Some people do. They get married to it, and sleep and eat together, just as husband and wife. If they go with joy they think it's adultery.”

Saul Bellow book Seize the Day

Source: Seize the Day

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

Saul Bellow book Herzog

Source: Herzog

“I 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."”

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

Quoted in "Feeling Rejected? Join Updike, Mailer, Oates..." by Barbara Bauer and Robert F. Moss, New York Times (21 July 1985), section 7, page 1, column 1
General sources