Canadian-American writer (1915-2005)
I love solitude, but I prize it most when plenty of company is available.
SAUL BELLOW
letter to Albert Glotzer, Apr. 19, 1996
Being right was largely a matter of explanations.
SAUL BELLOW
Mr. Sammler's Planet
I've got at least four or five readers. God has not abandoned me. Why the Lord of hosts has let the ranks become so thin, who can say?
SAUL BELLOW
letter to Richard Stern, Mar. 12, 1996
I think both optimism and pessimism are very boring outlooks. I like to know what's going on, and I like to tell myself that I can handle the worst, should my observations prove to be negative or unfavorable.
SAUL BELLOW
Q & A at Howard Community College, Feb. 1986
Greatness without models? Inconceivable. One could not be the thing itself -- Reality. One must be satisfied with symbols.
SAUL BELLOW
Mr. Sammler's Planet
One reason why violence is so popular may be that psychiatric insights have worn us out and we get satisfaction from seeing them blown away with automatic weapons.
SAUL BELLOW
Ravelstein
You see kids, little boys, practicing the jeers of their television heroes--they shape themselves on such models. It’s a strange conformity to what’s thrust at them; they adopt it and adapt it and play with it.
SAUL BELLOW
AGNI interview, 1997
You become a writer because you are convinced that you have a grip on reality of a certain distinctive kind. It belongs to you and to others who share such a recognition.
SAUL BELLOW
AGNI interview, 1997
It's no small matter to become rich and famous by saying exactly what you think -- to say it in your own words, without compromise.
SAUL BELLOW
Ravelstein
I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness that characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm.
SAUL BELLOW
The Paris Review, winter 1966
An utterly steady, reliable woman, responsible to the point of grimness. Daisy was a statistician for the Gallup Poll.
SAUL BELLOW
Herzog
Strict seriousness was far more dangerous than any joke.
SAUL BELLOW
Ravelstein
There are those who believe that clumsiness and truthfulness go together. But cumbersomeness does not necessarily imply a sincere heart.
SAUL BELLOW
The Paris Review, winter 1966
The earth is literally a mirror of thoughts. Objects themselves are embodied thoughts. Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything.
SAUL BELLOW
Mr. Sammler's Planet
In every direction, the walls of life are tiled with such facts so that you can never account for them all, only note some of the more conspicuous ones.
SAUL BELLOW
Ravelstein
Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
SAUL BELLOW
Mr. Sammler's Planet
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
Conversations with Saul Bellow
I don’t knock films or television shows, but they nail you down to a kind of externality. Nothing is going to be communicated which demands a softer approach--or let’s say a more insidious approach--into the soul.
SAUL BELLOW
AGNI interview, 1997
Fidelity is for phonographs.
SAUL BELLOW
Humboldt's Gift
I didn't want to be ignored. I didn't want my books to be ignored. But I didn't really care to cut such a figure either because ... well, it interferes with the business of writing.
SAUL BELLOW
Q & A at Howard Community College, Feb. 1986