"Mozart: An Overture" (1992), pp. 13-14
It All Adds Up (1994)
Context: There is no need to make an inventory of the times. It is demoralizing to describe ourselves to ourselves yet again. It is especially hard on us since we believe (as we have been educated to believe) that history has formed us and that we are all mini-summaries of the present age.
Saul Bellow: Making
Saul Bellow was Canadian-born American writer. Explore interesting quotes on making.“This is what makes packaged opinion so attractive.”
"There Is Simply Too Much to Think About" (1992), pp. 173-174
It All Adds Up (1994)
Context: There is simply too much to think about. It is hopeless — too many kinds of special preparation are required. In electronics, in economics, in social analysis, in history, in psychology, in international politics, most of us are, given the oceanic proliferating complexity of things, paralyzed by the very suggestion that we assume responsibility for so much. This is what makes packaged opinion so attractive.
Nobel Prize lecture (12 December 1976)
General sources
Context: A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life. It tells us that for every human being there is a diversity of existences, that the single existence is itself an illusion in part, that these many existences signify something, tend to something, fulfill something; it promises us meaning, harmony, and even justice.
“We do not make up history and culture. We simply appear, not by our own choice.”
Great Jewish Short Stories, introduction to the Dell paperback edition (1963)
General sources
Context: We are all such accidents. We do not make up history and culture. We simply appear, not by our own choice. We make what we can of our condition with the means available. We must accept the mixture as we find it — the impurity of it, the tragedy of it, the hope of it.
“Some people, if they didn't make it hard for themselves, might fall asleep.”
Source: The Adventures of Augie March
General sources
Source: Henderson the Rain King (1959) [Viking/Penguin, 1984, ISBN 0-140-07269-1], ch. XVIII, p. 271
Source: The Adventures of Augie March (1953), Ch. 6
“Anxiety destroys scale, and suffering makes us lose perspective.”
"The Sealed Treasure" (1960), p. 62
It All Adds Up (1994)
"The Distracted Public" (1990)
It All Adds Up (1994)
To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account (1976) [Viking/Penguin, 1998, ISBN 0-141-18075-7], p. 21
General sources
Source: Introduction to The Closing of the American Mind (1988), p. 18
Source: The Adventures of Augie March (1953), Ch. 1 (opening line)
“A good American makes propaganda for whatever existence has forced him to become.”
"Cousins," from Him With His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories (1984), p. 263
General sources