Saul Bellow
A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.Collection: Brainy
What is art but a way of seeing?Collection: Art
Happiness can only be found if you can free yourself of all other distractions.Collection: Happiness
When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.Collection: Funny
A fool can throw a stone in a pond that 100 wise men can not get out.Collection: Men
Psychoanalysis pretends to investigate the Unconscious. The Unconscious by definition is what you are not conscious of. But the Analysts already know what's in it - they should, because they put it all in beforehand.
Whoever wants to reach a distant goal must take small steps.
Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
A man is only as good as what he loves.
We are always looking for the book it is necessary to read next.
In Los Angeles all the loose objects in the country were collected, as if America had been tilted and everything that wasn't tightly screwed down had slid into Southern California.
Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining.
No realistic, sane person goes around Chicago without protection.
I've never turned over a fig leaf yet that didn't have a price tag on the other side.
A good novel is worth more than the best scientific study.
If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.
California is like an artificial limb the rest of the country doesn't really need. You can quote me on that.
A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life.
People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.
She was what we used to call a suicide blonde - dyed by her own hand.
You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.
There is an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for.
There are evils that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever... money, for instance, or war.
Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love.
All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he's a writer. It's an aphrodisiac.
I'm glad I haven't lived in vain.
Conquered people tend to be witty.
In expressing love we belong among the undeveloped countries.
I think that New York is not the cultural centre of America, but the business and administrative centre of American culture.
With a novelist, like a surgeon, you have to get a feeling that you've fallen into good hands - someone from whom you can accept the anesthetic with confidence.
Any artist should be grateful for a naive grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.
Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty; but learn to be happy alone.Collection: Happiness
Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.Collection: Life
Readiness to answer all questions is the infallible sign of stupidity.Collection: Stupidity
You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.Collection: Inspirational
I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.Collection: Art
Human character is smaller now, people don't have durable passions; they've replaced passions with excitement.Collection: Passion
...there is no old age of the soul.Collection: Soul
There are times when the most practical thing is to lie down.Collection: Lying
In an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness. But the pursuit of sanity can be a form of madness, tooCollection: Crazy
A man should be able to hear, and to bear, the worst that could be said of him.Collection: Real Men
The best and purest human beings, from the beginning of time, have understood that life is sacred.Collection: Life
Hapiness can only be found if you can free yourself of all other distractions.Collection: Free Yourself
A plan relieves you of the torment of choice.Collection: Choices
Losing a parent is something like driving through a plate-glass window. You didn't know it was there until it shattered, and then for years to come you're picking up the pieces -- down to the last glassy splinter.Collection: Glasses
I would like to explain that I consider prayer above all an act of gratitude for existence.Collection: Gratitude
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. While in the parlors of indignation the right-thinking citizen brings his heart to a boil. (p. 51)Collection: Heart
When the striving ceases, there is life waiting as a gift.Collection: Waiting
The late philosopher Morris R. Cohen of CCNY was asked by a student in the metaphysics course, Professor Cohen, how do I know that I exist? The keen old prof replied, And who is asking?Collection: Asking
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.Collection: Mean